A Life Lived
by L. Mouse
Summary: This is a crossover with Highlander, in my Swordsmen universe, covering an Immortal Kenshin's life from his proposal to Kaoru up through the current day. How would being Immortal affect a man who deeply loves his family, friends, and country?
1. Chapter 1

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Author's notes: This is a very long story that is still in progress. I am aware there are some cultural errors, grammatical mistakes, and assorted booboos. I would like to note that I generally work without a beta reader due to time constraints and -- like many people -- I'm awful at spotting my own errors. I am currently going through this story and slowly fixing things now that I've had a few years of distance between the writing of the story and the current editing of the early chapters.

This also started out as a couple of drabbles. It's somewhat grown. This is the story that I work on when I'm tired, stressed, sick, or generally need an escape

_Swordsmen _is a crossover with _Highlander_. Most of my _Swordsmen _stories are set in the modern day; this is the back story, dealing with Kenshin's history as an Immortal. What would it be like, I wondered, to realize you will never grow old and you will never die except by freak accident or deliberate malice? Now, what if that Immortal were a good, decent man who loves his family very much and who cannot stomach the rules of the Immortal game?

Kenshin works perfectly in that role. He's already skilled with a sword, and his canonical beliefs mesh nicely with the desire I had to tell a story from an Immortal who refused to play the Game from the very beginning.

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"Sanosuke!" Kaoru's bellow -- it could be described as nothing other than a _bellow _-- reverberated through the dojo. Kenshin winced as her voice rose even higher in strident outrage. "Sanosuke, get in here _right now_!"

Sano, half asleep on the steps in a warm patch of sunlight, fish bones hanging from his mouth, jolted upright in surprise. Kenshin was up to his elbows in laundry and watched with fervent relief that _he _was not the target of her rage, as Sanosuke leaped to his feet and attempted to sneak out of the yard.

He suspected Sano wasn't going to make it to the gate.

He was right.

Kaoru burst out of the kitchen, took aim, and fired an empty tofu bucket at Sanosuke. Sano ducked, but Kaoru had taken that into account, and the bucket collided with his shoulders with a thunk that Kenshin could hear clear across the yard.

"You promised to get the tofu!" Kaoru snapped at him. "Now lunch is going to be late. And I'm hungry!"

"But ..." Sanosuke visibly bit back several responses, at least one of which had to be a snide comment on the bad things Kaoru could do with tofu and how it might be kinder for all concerned if he didn't provide her the materials for her cooking, uh, experiments.

"Kenshin," Kaoru glanced at him, her blue eyes softening a bit. "Kenshin is going to cook lunch when you return, not me, so quit with the stalling. I have a class to teach, and with some actual students."

"That's right," Kenshin said, giving Sanosuke a cheerful smile. It wouldn't hurt Sano to contribute, given the amount of time he spent eating at their home. Kaoru was being far more direct about it than Kenshin ever was, but then, she always was. He concurred with Kaoru, "It sounds like it's your turn to buy the tofu."

"Jou-chan ..." Sano started to make a token protest.

"Don't Jou-chan me. Get!" Kaoru pointed at the gate.

Sanosuke _got_ -- if he'd had a tail, it would have been between his legs. Kenshin swallowed a laugh, and said mildly to Kaoru, "Does he actually have money to buy the tofu?"

Kaoru had her arms folded. "He won pretty good at dice last night. I heard that from Yahiko, who heard from Tae, who heard from ..."

Kenshin held a hand up, stopping Kaoru. He chuckled. "Then it will do him good to contribute around here, for once, that it will."

"Quite." Kaoru fell silent, and smiled faintly at him. It was an odd half-smile, not quite reaching her eyes.

Kenshin met her gaze and smiled uncertainly back, then returned to his work. Her expression had softened more and grown wistful, as she'd looked at him. He tried not to acknowledge that expression, but he'd _seen._

"Kenshin ..."

"Yes, Kaoru-dono?"

"It's nothing, I guess." She turned around, then, and walked back inside.

He paused from scrubbing bedding against the washboard to watch her cross the yard. Almost, he called her back, but he just couldn't find the words. He knew 'nothing' wasn't nothing at all, it was something, and he had a good idea just what that 'something' was. He'd _seen _the look in her eyes.

So wrapped up was he in watching her walk away that he didn't hear Yahiko behind him. When the boy said, "See something you like, Kenshin-san?" Kenshin nearly bit his tongue, and did jump in surprise, dropping the bedding back in the water and reaching for the hilt of the sword he didn't wear here in the safe confines of the dojo's walls.

"Yahiko-kun, do _not _do that to this one," Kenshin said, reprovingly, after he surpressed a hysterical urge to giggle. Then the boy's words registered and he realized his thoughts -- essentially, _She's so beautiful_ -- must have been very obviously written in the expression on his face. He schooled his expression to careful neutrality.

"Didn't know it was possible to 'do that' to you," Yahiko said, with a snicker lurking in among his words. "You really didn't hear me coming?" Merriment lurked in the boy's dark brown eyes -- he'd scored on Kenshin and he knew it and in all truth this was a rare thing. Nobody _ever _snuck up on Kenshin and made him jump. Yahiko had _tried _before.

Kenshin rocked back on his heels and regard Yahiko levelly for a moment from his position crouched next to the laundry tub. In the last month or two, Yahiko had started sprouting like a weed; he'd be taller than Kenshin within a few more months. He'd never be a tall man, but it didn't take much to beat Kenshin in the height department.

_He's growing up_, Kenshin realized. _He is thirteen years old. Have I really lived here three years? _

After Enishi, he'd returned here and settled into a comfortable life. It had felt good to have friends, and a place to call home. He was shocked, suddenly, by the realization that more than a couple of years had flown by without his barest acknowledgement.

"So?" Yahiko nodded in Kaoru's direction. His words were teasing and highly amused. "See something you like?"

"I was just distracted, was all," Kenshin said, mildly, turning his attention back to the laundry.

"Uh-huh." Yahiko said, sounding suddenly annoyed. "I don't get you, Kenshin."

"Oro?"

"I just don't. Kaoru's not going to wait forever for you to take some initiative, you know -- and if she _does _wait until she's old and grey for you, then she deserves better than that!" Yahiko snorted with all the wisdom of a thirteen year old boy. "You're hurting her, Kenshin. And I'm sick of it."

Coming from the boy who called Kaoru _busu_ more often than not when speaking to her even now, that statement stung. Kenshin refused to rise to the bait, however, and said, quietly, "She may find someone else, this is true."

"Kenshin?" Yahiko seemed to find this almost funny. "When you thought she was dead? You spent weeks propped up against a wall and staring into space until you damn near starved to death. Are you _really _going to stand by and let another man have her? C'mon, Kenshin. You're being stupid."

_Only Yahiko_, Kenshin reflected, after the kid had stalked off, would have had the temerity to speak so frankly to him. _He's thirteen,_ Kenshin thought, wryly. _I remember thirteen. Lack of tact seems to go with the territory ... not that Yahiko-kun has ever been the most tactful of children._

_Still, I seem to remember saying a few rude things to Shishou when I was the same age he is ... At least he's just hassling me about Kaoru and not running off to war. Yahiko has more sense than I did at that age. _

None of that calm rationalization was doing anything for the fact that Yahiko's apparently impulsive words had smarted, and badly.

Kenshin hung the laundry up to dry, glancing a couple of times towards the house.

_He loved her. _He knew that.

So why couldn't he act? Why couldn't he find voice for his feelings? Why did he let the years slide by?

He truly didn't have an answer to that question.


	2. Chapter 2

Happily Ever

----------------

There was a stranger in the market. A foreigner. Brown hair bleached blond at the tips by the sun. Western dress.

Foreigners were not _entirely _unknown these days, but something about the stranger was different. Kenshin stopped in his tracks -- Kaoru, oblivious, continued on ahead without him for several strides before realizing he was no longer behind her and stopping also.

She followed his gaze. The stranger was half a block away.

"Do you know him?"

Kenshin shook his head, uncertainly. He didn't. And the stranger wasn't doing anything but buying a gi, so it wasn't as if there was anything to set him apart.

"C'mon, then. I'm hungry." Kaoru headed for the Akabeko. She had picked up six new students in the last month, and had suggested beef hot pot to celebrate.

Tae greeted them warmly; Kaoru and Tae gossiped a bit and Kenshin settled down before the table, letting the women's comfortable dialogue wash over him. He listened, watching Kaoru -- she was animated, laughing, obviously enjoying hersel. The six new students made, what, twenty? After three years, it was about time that the dojo saw some success.

And it was good for Yahiko to have some competition.

When the strongest _ki _he'd ever felt washed over him, he was so surprised he dropped his cup of tea. "Gomen, Tae," he apologized, somewhat absently.

The _ki _belonged to the foreigner, who'd stepped into the Akabeko. Their eyes met. Kenshin rose without even thinking about it, hand dropping to the hilt of his sword. He didn't understand it -- he'd _never _felt a _ki _that strong before -- and he was worried the man might be a threat.

Kenshin's instincts insisted the man was armed, though he had no sword in evidence. He was lithe, and he walked with a swordsman's grace. He wasn't overly tall, just average height, but he had a presence that belonged to a larger man.

The stranger's eyes flicked over Kenshin; he realized that the man was giving him a similar inspection. The foreigner's eyes settled on Kenshin's sword, moved to his face, and then back to his sword. His expression was very wary.

"Kenshin, do you know this man?" Tae asked.

Kenshin found his voice. "I think I'd like to, that I would."

The foreigner seemed to take that as an invitation; he walked closer, and said, in heavily accented Japanese, while extending his hand for a western-style handshake, "I'm Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod."

"Himura Kenshin," Kenshin said, grasping the man's hand. The man's hand was heavily callused and he was a swordsman for certain. "You are ... unusual. What _are _you?"

Impolite, perhaps -- in fact, his words were direct enough to elicit a startled noise out of Kaoru, who wasn't used to hearing him speak so frankly. In truth, Kenshin was rattled by this stranger.

The man's eyebrows rose. He glanced again at Kenshin's sakabatou. "You truly do not know what I am?"

"I think I would like to, that I would," Kenshin murmured.

"You're young," the man murmured. "Yes. Of course." The man shook his head. "You do not know what I am ... well, at least you've got a _sword._"


	3. Chapter 3

Happily Ever

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Kenshin regarded the stranger with something akin to bemused horror. While MacLeod-san's accent was thick, Kenshin didn't think the problem here was that information was being lost in translation. He thought the man was stark raving mad -- and an unpleasant sort of mad that imagined terribly evil things. In truth, he was trying to figure out if he ought to report Connor to the police as a possible threat to the good citizens of Tokyo, or just tell him to politely get lost.

"So," Kenshin said, very carefully, "You're telling me I'm Immortal unless someone cuts my head off."

MacLeod-san nodded. He leaned casually against the dojo's wall -- it was late, the students were gone, everyone was in bed.

"And people will try." Kenshin said skeptically -- very skeptically.

"Yes."

"Because they want this unworthy one's power and knowledge ..." Here, Kenshin suppressed a shudder. If anything of what the man said was the truth, the thought of anyone gaining his knowledge of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu was chilling. "... and because in the end, there can only be one Immortal."

"You don't believe a fucking thing I'm telling you, do you?" MacLeod-san said, straightening up. "Himura-san, how old were you the first time you died?"

Kenshin shook his head slowly. This was too crazy to believe and he saw no reason to place any credence in the man's claim -- abnormally strong _ki _or not. "I haven't."

"Oh, you have died. I can tell. You're one of us." Connor regarded Kenshin for a moment with eyes that were uncomfortably _sane_. "By your height and your appearance, I'm guessing you were in your teens -- though you manage to look somewhat older because of the way you carry yourself. Though people are going to start wondering about your appearance pretty quickly."

Kenshin folded his arms, tucking hands into the sleeves of his gi, and said very firmly, "I haven't _died_. I'm still alive."

A nagging doubt clawed at him, though. _I've survived things I shouldn't have. Shishio. Enishi. The Bakamatsu. The Revolution. I've been close to the edge countless times. If what this man says is true ... maybe I have gone _over _the edge at least once. It'd be an interestingly academic question to figure out exactly _when _that was. There are definitely multiple possibilities, were I to actually believe this madman._

"How good are you with that sword you carry?"

"Oro?" Kenshin said, confused by the change in subject.

"Because you're going to have a hell of a time with people who will try to take your head, you know. You're short and you look pretty delicate."

"I'm good enough." Kenshin said, mildly. He decided he'd heard enough, and it was time to end this conversation. "MacLeod-san, with all due respect, it is very late. I will walk you back to where you are staying if you would like."

"Before we go, I need to prove something to you," Connor said. And suddenly a sword _appeared _in his hand, seemingly from thin air.

_Madman, _Kenshin thought, irritated now. _I do not need this. _

"Forgive me, but you _must _believe me."

Connor swung for Kenshin with killing force -- and discovered that Kenshin's _good enough _was a humble understatement. Kenshin's _sakabatou _flashed into his hand, deflected Connor's swing, and in very short order, Connor found himself sitting on his butt on the polished wood of the dojo's floor, disarmed, staring up at one moderately pissed samurai.

"That was impolite," Kenshin said, frowning. His eyes glittered; he hadn't appreciated Connor's sudden display of aggression at all.

Connor scrambled to his feet, scooped up his sword, and eyed Kenshin with a new light of respect in his eyes because Kenshin could have killed him if he'd wanted to. Easily. "I see that sword training is not going to be needed for you."

"No." Kenshin said, quietly. "I do not believe what you are saying; do you take this humble one for a fool?"

Connor shrugged. "You'll believe, eventually. Look me up when you do. I'll buy you a beer."

It would be another few years before Kenshin believed, and another forty before he ran into Connor purely by chance and took him up on that beer.

He still thought Connor was missing a few screws.


	4. Chapter 4

-1Happily Ever

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"So he really said you're Immortal?" Kaoru said, with a giggle. After a long day of work, she sat crosslegged on the porch behind him, back to the wall, enjoying the warm afternoon air. It was late, and they had the dojo to themselves -- Yahiko had said something about seeing Tsubame, and Sano was most likely off gambling.

Kenshin flashed her a grin, over his shoulder, as he sewed a neat lines of stitches in Yahiko's gi -- the boy had caught it on a nail and ripped a tear several inches long. Truthfully, Yahiko needed a new gi, because he was growing taller with each passing day. He was at the 'all arms and legs' stage of teenage that promised more growth spurts, and more expenses to keep him decently clothed.

Not that Kenshin exactly remembered _growth spurts_ -- he frowned into his sewing, wondering why he _hadn't _grown at least a few inches between fourteen and eighteen. It didn't seem like he had, not really. He'd gotten a bit broader through the chest -- but that was more a function of training than growing.

Surely the reason was malnutrition and lack of calories -- he distinctly remembered being _hungry _for most of his young life -- and not the reason the crazy foreigner had stated.

"Himura Kenshin, do _not _let what the madman said go to your head." Kaoru leaned forward swatted him with the back of her hand, "You _know _you're not Immortal. I'm sick of seeing you hurting."

"Oro! Kaoru-dono, this one is sewing!" He protested the abuse with a grin, ducking his head, but not upset at all. When Kaoru was relaxed enough to swat him, all was right with his world.

But there was that -- the injuries that he'd obtained in each of those fights. This was evidence that he wasn't what Connor had explained -- Connor had said he ought to heal faster than mortal, and better, and he emphatically didn't. But Connor had also said he needed to take a few heads to get the full effect of that benefit, that it was a function of Immortal power, and he wasn't about to find out if this was true. Connor had said most Immortals who were going to survive long term killed their first opponent within months of their first death.

And that was murder. It was _wrong_. It chilled him to the bone. To gain another's power -- his knowledge, and some sort of mystic strength -- by killing them? His revulsion knew no bounds when he thought about it.

"So this loon said you were going to live forever?" Kaoru scooted forward and settled beside him. Her tone of voice had changed, somehow, and he glanced up.

The setting sun caught her features -- made her look golden and angelic. It played through her dark hair, copper on ebony. His breath caught, briefly, looking at her -- she had that power over him. After a moment, he returned to his sewing, though the thought occurred, idly, as it often did, _I wish I could hold her close ..._

She leaned back, hands propped on the worn wood, face turned towards the sun. "Kenshin, wouldn't it be amazing if what the madman said was true? That you will live forever?"

"If what he said is true, people will try to kill me simply for what I am."

Kaoru snickered. "So what's new about that?"

"And," he said, without thinking, attention more on mending the gi than anything else, "You're _not _Immortal, according to the madman. I asked, because I was curious to see if he would claim you, too, in his delusion. If what he said was true, I would live forever young but watching you grow old and then die old age, and I do not think I could bear it if that were to happen. To live centuries without you at my side? No. I do not think I could bear that."

She went very still beside him, breath ceasing, eying him curiously. For a moment, he wasn't sure what he'd said to affect her so, and he replayed his words in his head, twice, before realizing what he'd implied -- that he _would _be around to watch her grow old. That he wouldn't wander off someday.

"Kenshin," she said, very quietly, "Are we going to do this forever? This -- thing -- between us, neither moving forward nor moving apart? Will you never let me in?"

He couldn't answer. He literally couldn't find the words. He was nobody's fool and he knew exactly what she meant -- would he forever be her hired man, simply sewing and cleaning and cooking, until the day she died? Because _she _didn't want that. And in truth, neither did he, though he couldn't explain why he waited to even acknowledge the feelings he knew they shared.

A gentle hand descended on his ponytail. It was his turn to freeze, as she stroked his hair, smoothing out the tangles; it was an almost casual gesture -- but they never touched. One hug, the occasional brush of hand against hand; he could count the moments like this on the fingers of one hand. "Kenshin," she said, in a very gentle voice, after a moment of silent caressing of his hair, "You're the strongest man I know. Why are you so scared of love?"

_Fear_.

He knew the emotion well though he'd never been afraid for himself -- his fear was always for others. That was one of his strengths, perhaps, that ability to face death down with no concern for his personal welfare. A kind of madness, too, but one he knew made him one of the best swordsmen alive. He'd never been afraid of dying, though he'd also chosen to live with his past and _survive_.

Except ... except that he _was _afraid for himself. Not of physical harm, never that, but with a jolt of recognition he realized he was terrified for his heart. He was afraid for his heart because it had been broken, so many times, and only mended partly by the years at the dojo, and it would shatter, if Kaoru were ever to push him away ...

_Coward_, he accused his heart.

_I'm afraid, _he thought, too honest even with himself not to admit it. _That's why I never act. Kaoru knows me better than I know myself, sometimes. _

"You're breaking my heart, Kenshin," she said, in a tone of voice he'd never heard out of her before. It was soft, sounded near tears, with a trace of bitterness. "I won't wait forever."

"Then don't ..." he said, without thinking, meaning _don't wait for us forever. _He meant to say more, to say he, too, was tired of waiting, but while he paused to formulate the words -- he wasn't sure he even had the vocabulary for what he wanted to say, but he knew now was the moment to summon the courage and find the words and say it -- she sucked a sharp breath in, and went very still beside him.

"Ken.. shin?" She sounded aghast.

Her hand withdrew from his hair. He looked sideways at her, shocked by her tone of voice. She knelt beside him, hands in her lap, head bowed, unshed tears glittering on her eyelashes, catching the setting sun. She looked utterly broken. What had he said?

_I've done this to her. But what ... _

_Then don't. _He'd said that, and he realized with dawning horror that she'd entirely misunderstood. He'd meant, _Don't wait for me anymore because I'm going to propose here, but give me a minute while I figure out what to say ... _And she'd heard, _Don't wait for me. Find someone else. _

"Kaoru-dono ..." He started to offer his heart and soul to her. He would give her everything. Marriage, love, utter devotion. He'd give it to her, right now, this instant. It was time -- it was _past _time. For Kaoru, he'd do anything, including conquer the rather large lump of terror in his soul over any relationship more intimate than 'good friend' ... he'd break those walls down and let her in.

The _Kaoru-dono_ was a mistake born of long habit. He realized that as soon as the _dono_ passed his lips. He should have simply said her _name_, as the intimate friend she was. _Damnit, I'm not good at this! _Kenshin mentally swore, as her expression grew still and closed.

"Don't say it." Bitterness, and no small amount of fear. She lunged to her feet. "You're killing me, Kenshin."

And she ran, then, disappearing around the corner of the building.

"Oroo ..." Kenshin groaned, slapping himself on the forehead. It was almost funny. Kaoru, who had been so patient with him for all these years, had finally snapped -- about thirty seconds before he was about to pour his heart out to her.

"Kaoru-dono?" He followed her path. She'd darted into the bath house and shut the door. He knocked on the door. Stubbornness was one of his better traits; having decided to confess his feelings to her, he wasn't about to let her get away now!

"Go away."

"Kaoru-dono, please come out and talk to this unworthy one. _Please_."

She was crying, he could hear her. Deep, wracking sobs. His guilt welled up; he wanted to cry _with _her -- he, who never cried, not even when his parents had died so long ago. Not when he'd thought _she _was dead. He just didn't cry. Never had. But he felt tears prickle at the corners of his eyes now.

_I did this to her_. The guilt was almost overwhelming.

"Can this one come in?" He asked, when no answer was forthcoming to his demand that she come out.

"No! Go away!"

Trusting that she was just hiding and that it was highly unlikely that she had undressed for a bath, he reached up and opened the door. She was curled in the corner, arms around her knees, tears streaming down her face. Her head jerked up at the noise of the door opening, and she stared at him for a moment, then buried her face in her knees again. "Go away. I don't want your pity."

He stepped into the bathhouse, closed the door after him, and sat down next to her.

"Kaoru," he said, softly, "Would you like to know what this unworthy one was going to say?"

"No." A sniffle. "You were going to say that you ... I don't know, that you don't want me. Not that way."

He'd broken her heart. He knew, now that _she _had given the emotion a name, that he'd been scared of the reverse -- that it would be his heart that would be broken. And it was hers that had shattered.

"Kaoru-dono, this one is so unworthy." Hesitantly, he reached out and cupped her cheek with his hand. "I am so _sorry_."

She lifted her head from her knees, met his eyes. Tears tracked freely down her face.

Impulsively, he scooted closer to her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. She stiffened in surprise, then tried to pull away. His arms tightened around her and held her close.

"Shhh. Kaoru-dono, allow this one a minute. Please." He wouldn't let her leave, knowing he'd only be tracking her down again, and she'd likely run farther this time if he let her go. Something in his tone of voice stilled her attempts to escape. She sat very still, and he realized she was shaking.

He rested his forehead against her temple, and said in a low voice, "Kaoru-dono, I _was _going to ask if you would marry this unworthy one. You ran too soon. This one loves you."

Her silence scared him all anew, for a moment. Her head came up from her knees, and her blue eyes were very wide. Disbelieving. She didn't stop crying, but her arms went around him and she buried her face in his shoulder. For a long moment, she held on to him, tears dampening his shoulder.

"Kaoru-dono?" He said, gently, "A response would be traditional, that it would."

Kaoru's eyes searched his face, "Kenshin, I thought ..."

"Aaa. This one knows what you thought. I'm so very sorry. This one has handled things badly -- and has, for a long time. If it's not painfully obvious by this time, Kaoru-dono, this one is very bad at matters of the heart."

She snickered, apparently agreeing with that critical self-assessment. "Kenshin?"

"Yes, Kaoru-dono?"

"The answer is _yes_. And also, I love you, you idiot."

Shyly, he reached out and pulled her back into his arms. Held her. And after a moment, after summoning every bit of his courage, he reached up, tipped her chin up with two fingers, and kissed her gently. When they finally came up for air, very shyly, he said, "I love you too, Kaoru."

------------------------

Much later, Sanosuke showed up at the dojo, noting with curiosity that no lights were lit inside. Had Kaoru and Kenshin gone out?

"Sano," Kenshin's voice came from the darkness next to the steps. The samurai's voice was low. "Come back in the morning."

Sanosuke started to protest -- then realized Kenshin wasn't alone. Kenshin sat on the steps with his arms around the missy.

_With his arms around Kaoru. _The two looked so natural that it took Sano a moment to realize the significance of what he was seeing. Kaoru was snuggled into Kenshin's embrace, her head against his shoulder, one arm around his waist, eyes closed. Her hair was down, a surprisingly long tumbling fall of ebony curls. She appeared to be asleep.

Sanosuke's eyebrows rose clear to his hairline. "'Bout time, buddy," he murmured, with a grin. "About time."

Kenshin's eyes smoldered warning at Sano. Kenshin clearly wasn't comfortable with a witness to this. Sano held his hands up defensively and then bolted for the gate, laughing under his breath -- laughter that turned to open whoops of amusement as soon as he was more-or-less out of earshot.


	5. Chapter 5

-1Happily Ever

-------------------

"Shhh! Here he comes!" Megumi hissed under her breath, when Tsubame made a warning gesture from the doorway of the Akabeko.

Moments later, Kenshin stepped through the doorway -- and stopped short, as he realized he was the center of attention of pretty much all of his friends, plus Saito. And they were _all _looking at him.

Kaoru, behind him, bumped into his back, then giggled nervously when she, too, realized that all eyes were on them.

"Oroooo?" Kenshin said, with something akin dawning horror in his eyes. He glared at Sanosuke, who insouciantly shrugged. _You told_! Kenshin's eyes accused. He then glanced at _Saito_ in disbelief -- the man had a booth to himself, but something in his expression indicated he, too, knew.

_Damn straight I told everyone_, Sano's grin said right back. _Even Saito. _

Or maybe Saito had just heard through the grapevine. Which was doubtless humming like a telegraph wire right about now.

Yahiko was grinning almost as broadly as Sanosuke. Megumi had a little smile playing around her lips, and a mischievous light in her eyes. Tsubame looked like she was on the verge of an apoplectic fit of giggles. Tae was smiling behind her hand. Everyone they knew was there ... even just casual acquaintances.

"Hey, buddy!" Sano grabbed Kenshin in a headlock that Kenshin most certainly could have escaped from if he really wanted to, but not without damage to Sanosuke. Sano ground his knuckles into Kenshin's red hair, laughing when he protested and tried to wriggle free. Kaoru was howled with laughter, hands over her mouth, watching the two.

Sano demanded, "Details, Kenshin! So are you two engaged?"

There really was only one response to this sort of abuse. "Oroooooo!"

"C'mon, Kenshin. Out with it!" Sano's knuckles were hard and he wasn't exactly being gentle.

"Orooo ... aaa ... hai! Yes, we're getting married! Let _go_!" Kenshin managed to wriggle free at last; he scrambled several steps away, and tried to resume his much abused dignity, but with little success -- because now _Kaoru _was clinging to his arm, laughing so hard she was wheezing and her eyes were watering, and a good bit of that laughter was at his expense. Sanosuke was just about the _only _person who would dare to manhandle Kenshin.

Pretty much the entire Akabeko was cheering at the announcement.

"This one wasn't actually going to keep it as secret," Kenshin said, sounding annoyed. He put an arm around Kaoru and pulled her close. Shoulders still shaking with laughter, Kaoru snuggled up against him. She exchanged a look with Megumi that said, very clearly, _Mine, and thank you. _"We were going to tell all of you today anyway."

Kaoru, still snickering, said, "But this way? Was _much _more fun. My sides hurt now!"

"Oroo ...!" Kenshin exclaimed, as she kissed him on the cheek. Then, suddenly, to the cheers of the crowd, he grabbed her and turned it into a _proper _kiss, until they were both blushing fiercely and there was no doubt in anyone's mind that, yes, a wedding should be in the future -- and soon!


	6. Chapter 6

-1Happily Ever

-----------------

Author's note: One of the issues with this crossover 'verse is that Immortals can't have children. My explanation for Kenji, therefore, is that he was adopted. Somebody asked how Kenshin found another red-haired kid in Japan, and this is the explanation ...

----------------

Kaoru's coughing woke Kenshin; it was a thick, loose, phlegmy cough -- the kind that sounded worse than it really was. She was on the mend, he thought. Winter had brought the worst outbreak of influenza in years; half the city was sick with it, and Megumi's clinic was swamped. People were dying.

He'd somehow escaped catching it -- truthfully, he never got sick -- but Yahiko was currently lying feverish and miserable in the next room.

"Do you need water?" He asked Kaoru, quietly.

"No." Her voice was hoarse, but strong.

He reached a hand out, rested it on her forehead, and ignored her attempt to swat it away. Her forehead was cool. Her fever was gone.

Since he was awake, he decided since he might as well check on Yahiko too. "Shh. Go back to sleep."

Kaoru grumbled something about _cold_ when he stood up. Not fever-chills, he thought, but simply the loss of his body heat on a cold winter's night. The air in the room was chilly; it was close to dawn.

"I'll be right back, love," he said, smiling at her. In the moonlight coming through the open window, she was beautiful -- dark hair loose on the pillow and framing her face. Three years of marriage and he was still somewhat in awe of the fact that Kaoru was _his._

_This unworthy one is truly blessed,_ he thought, smiling at her in the darkness.

Yahiko, in the next room, was restlessly asleep. Kenshin silently padded into the room, crouched beside the teen, and listened to his harsh breathing for a moment. Yahiko was snoring thickly, mouth open, and when Kenshin held a hand above Yahiko's forehead without touching it, he could feel the heat from a strong fever. Not good, but not dangerously ill, either, Kenshin thought. Just miserable. A normal bout of influenza.

Given the number of people who had died this winter -- including some he knew -- he was wary of the boy's symptoms, but he truthfully saw no real reason for concern. It was simply generalized worry making him check on Yahiko this night.

The boy coughed, muttered, and rolled over. Kenshin rose before Yahiko woke from his presence -- the kid was getting remarkably good at detecting _ki_, though Kenshin prayed he'd never have reason to learn to sleep with one eye open as Kenshin still did by habit.

It was hard to believe that Yahiko was sixteen. It had been six years since he'd come to the dojo, six years since he'd hauled a skinny, foul-mouthed, bad-mannered pickpocket home with him.

"Kenshin." A low voice from outside.

"Sano?" Kenshin said, surprised, then slipped silently outside to join Sanosuke.

"Megumi sent me." Sanosuke looked worn -- even in the moonlight, Kenshin could see the lines of exhaustion around his eyes. "We need help at the clinic."

He hesitated. He was still concerned about Yahiko, a bit, and loathe to leave. This was especially true since Kaoru would probably be unable to keep Yahiko in bed where he belonged -- Kenshin could, but Yahiko had considerably less respect for Kaoru's orders than Kenshin's. "Is it very bad?"

Sanosuke nodded. He ran his bandaged hand over his face. "We lost four people today. One was a little girl. Kenshin, it's bad. There must be fifty people there -- we've got them in tents in the yard, even."

Kenshin sighed. "I'll tell Kaoru."

"How's the missy doing?"

"She's going to be fine, but Yahiko is sick." Kenshin ran a hand over his hair. "Kaoru's well enough to keep an eye on him. I'll be down at the clinic in a bit."

"The brat's tough. He'll bounce back in a week, you watch." Sanosuke predicted.

----------------------

Megumi hadn't been sleeping much. Kenshin could tell; he'd seen those dark shadows under her eyes before. She'd lost weight in the last week and her cheekbones stood out in sharp relief. _More working than eating,_ Kenshin thought, critically.

"Sir Ken." She rose from the bedside of a young woman Kenshin didn't recognize. "Thank God you're here. Everyone's sick; I don't have anyone to help me ..."

"Where do you need me?" He asked, quietly.

"Can you make breakfast for us?" She pointed in the direction of the kitchen.

He glanced at the sky, which was just growing light in the east. "Aa. I can make breakfast. How many people?"

"I've got about twenty who don't have any family to bring them food. Plus the five of us."

She'd unconsciously included Sanosuke in that number of five, Kenshin realized -- when had that happened? He glanced over at Sano; the man was checking a woman's pulse with his good hand, then feeling her forehead.

Kenshin would have expected Sanosuke to be the _last _person to be helping at the clinic right now, or at least helping with the patients, but he was, and apparently had been for awhile. Megumi, following his gaze, commented, in a tone of low surprise, "He's been an incredible help."

"Sano will surprise you," Kenshin replied, with a shrug. "He has a remarkable ability to rise to the occasion when necessary, and avoid work the rest of the time."

"Yes." Megumi agreed, with a faint ghost of a smile.

Kenshin made breakfast; by the time he was done, the sun was up, and the roosters crowing. The clinic was almost out of food, so after passing out rice balls to the staff and bowls of soup to the patients who were now waking, he went to the market.

When he returned an hour later, a man was carrying a woman up the walkway -- foreigners, the man blond, the woman with hair as red as Kenshin's own. The man was _tall _-- taller than Hiko, even. A little boy followed after them, obviously their son by the hair that was as red as his mother's. The boy was maybe four years old.

More flu. The woman's face was pale, her lips blue, her breath coming harsh and fast. Pneumonia.

The man staggered through the door and deposited the woman in a chair; she slumped forward, unconscious. Kenshin pressed a hand to her forehead, noting the burning heat. Her fingers were black, and a thin trickle of blood drained from her nose. It didn't look good at all.

"I'll get Megumi."

The man gave him a look of utter incomprehension before coughing thickly and fainting. Kenshin tried to catch him, failed -- the western man was easily twice his weight -- but at least broke his fall.

The little boy started crying.

The man had a fever too, and his breathing was rapid and his heart racing. Neither of them looked very good. "Megumi-dono!" Kenshin shouted.

Megumi sighed heavily after checking both of them. "They won't make it. _She _won't live an hour."

That had been Kenshin's guess too; the man was coughing up blood and groaning. The woman was past sound, past all hope consciousness. Her pulse was slowing even as he checked again while Megumi loosened the man's shirt.

"What's your name?" Kenshin asked the man. He didn't even know what nationality they were, other than European.

His words earned him only a blank look. He wasn't sure if the man didn't speak Japanese, or if he was too far gone with fever and pneumonia to speak at all.

"Where are you from?" Kenshin tried again.

At that instant, the woman started to seize, back arching, feet drumming against the ground. Megumi swore, startling him -- Kenshin hadn't heard her use profanity very often. She was a lady, but even ladies had breaking points.

The boy howled, "Maaaaammaaaaaaa!"

"Get him out of here, Sir Ken."

Kenshin swallowed hard, nodded, and picked the child up. The boy clung to him rather than resisting.

His mama was going to die; Kenshin figured it was best that the kid not see it. He'd seen his own parents pass away -- and diptheria was _not _a pleasant way to go -- in the end, he'd been the only one in the family to live. By some quirk, he hadn't even gotten sick. And alone, he'd tended his family to the last.

This boy was old enough to remember things, and Kenshin didn't want him to have those terrible memories to live with. He wrapped his arms around the child and fled outside. In all truth, he didn't want to see this either.

The kid clung to him, whimpering, "Mammmaaaa ... maamaaaa ..."

"Shh. Shh, shh, kiddo." Kenshin rocked him back and forth, pacing the length of the clinic's yard in the bright cold morning sun. "This one knows, that he does. This one knows how much it hurts. I know you want your mother. Shhh, kiddo, shhh."

The boy's fingers clutched his _gi_. He whimpered, "Mama."

"This one knows, this one knows. Shhh, kiddo." Kenshin walked back and forth, rocking the child, smoothing his hand through the boy's thick hair. Grief welled up. To lose parents so young, in a foreign place ... did the boy even speak any Japanese?

"Mama!"

"This one knows. This one knows." Kenshin held him close, feeling the child's tears soak through the fabric of his _gi_.

The boy's father passed away within hours of his mother. They never learned their names -- or the boy's name, either, and nobody spoke the language the child knew.

--------------

Megumi watched Kenshin as he worked. She was so tired she wanted to sleep where she sat, on the steps, but knew that it would be hours yet before she could catch more than a moment's rest.

The man was up to his elbows in a tub of hot water, washing linens for the clinic. He'd been helping at the clinic for four days now without a complaint, ever helpful, handling all the routine chores that kept the clinic functioning -- laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, mopping the floor, running errands -- all the unglamorous housekeeping work that was absolutely essential to keeping the clinic functioning. Many men would have refused the job, particularly since some of the messes included copious amounts of various bodily fluids.

And ... on top of all that ... he was babysitting.

The boy clung to Kenshin's side, one hand clutching the fabric of his hakama. He was an attractive child with shoulder-length wavy red hair a few shades lighter than Kenshin's, plus blue eyes, and freckles. Saito thought he might be Irish, but nobody knew for sure. Saito was working on finding his identity, but the police hadn't been able to even put a name to the boy's parents. It was, really, a mystery. They'd simply shown up -- and then died.

Neither of them had any identification of any sort -- Megumi had kept the woman's jewelry, a locket and a ring, and the Bible the man had carried in the pocket of his coat. The Bible had some handwritten names and dates, in a Western alphabet, but even knowing the names and apparent birth and death records did little to find the boy's family.

Sano, in a fit of tired wit, had nicknamed the kid Kenji, because he was so obviously attached to Kenshin and they looked a bit alike.

Kenshin said something to the boy, then made a "drinking" gesture with his hand. He pointed at the kitchen. The kid scampered into the kitchen and returned with an empty mug. Kenshin rose, got water from the pump in the yard, and gravely offered the boy a drink before slaking his own thirst.

There was a connection there -- Megumi smiled, a bit, watching them. The kid would not be without a family long if they couldn't find out who he was. She'd stake her life on it.

"Sir Ken," she raised her voice a bit, to carry across the courtyard -- she was too tired to get up and walk over to him. "After you're done there, why don't you go home for a bit. You look exhausted."

"This one is fine," Kenshin said, without looking up from his laundry.

"You won't be able to help anyone if you catch the flu because you've worn yourself to a frazzle," Megumi scolded. "And Yahiko's probably sick of Kaoru's cooking."

Kenshin sighed. "This is true ..."

"Go on. Go home. Come back after you've had at least eight hour's sleep. Doctor's orders." Megumi paused, and eyed the kid. "You might want to take him home with you, though."

Kenshin dropped a hand on the boy's shoulder, a casual gesture that Megumi didn't miss at all. _I almost hope_, she thought, _that we _don't _find Kenji's family. It's been three years since Kenshin and Kaoru married -- and no children. I never expected to see Sir Ken and Kaoru without little ones of their own. Sir Ken loves children; he deserves a whole pack of his own offspring. But after three years and no babies -- something's wrong._

And, given the way Kaoru and Kenshin _looked _at each other when they thought no one else was watching, Megumi was reasonably sure the 'something wrong' was not a lack of the activity which made babies.

_Lucky woman, _Megumi thought, without rancor. She'd long ago accepted that Kenshin had chosen Kaoru -- and that he was completely and totally happy with that decision.

"I'll be back first thing in the morning, that I will." Kenshin said, finally. "And -- the boy comes with me, yes, that he does."

-----------------------------


	7. Chapter 7

-1Happily Ever

--------------------

Kenshin ran his hand over the boy's red curls, trying to reassure him as he led the way back to the dojo. The kid clung him, one hand holding the loose fabric of Kenshin's sleeve and the fingers of his other stuffed into his mouth. He hurried after Kenshin, two strides to every one of Kenshin's, and obviously terrified that they might be separated by the way he kept close to Kenshin's side.

"Wish I knew your name, kid," Kenshin glanced down at him -- the boy's red hair glinted brightly in the afternoon sun. Was that what _his _hair looked like to others? It fairly glowed.

"Kenshin." The boy said, patting Kenshin's leg with sticky fingers.

"Yeah. That's this one's name," Kenshin finally reached down and picked him up. It was a long walk to the dojo and he didn't want to wear the boy out.

The kid said something in his own language, ending it with a, "... mama?" and an audible question mark. A pause, and more unknown words, "... daddy?"

He'd figured out that 'mama' and 'daddy' where the boy's names for his mother and father. Kenshin said, "Your mama and your daddy aren't coming back. I'm so sorry, that I am."

He knew that pain. He wished he could explain things to the child, at least on a level the boy could understand. The boy certainly knew that his parents had been sick and then disappeared, but how could he know they'd never, ever, come back if nobody could tell him that?

Kenshin swallowed down a hard lump of grief for the boy. He, at least, had known that his parents were _dead_. "I'm sorry, kid, that I am."

Kaoru was in the dojo's yard when Kenshin entered through the gate; she was drawing water from the well. Her eyebrows rose when she saw the boy and with relief, she said, "Kenshin -- how's the clinic?"

Kaoru had been down several times with food and supplies. Megumi refused to let her stay; Kaoru was still mending from her own sickness.

"Bad. I'm going back in the morning."

"Who's the kid?"

"An orphan," Kenshin set the boy down. "He doesn't have anybody. His parents died four days ago. Megumi asked this one to watch him."

"Poor kid." Kaoru crouched on eye-level with him. "What's your name?"

"He doesn't speak our language." The boy was suddenly overcome with a fit of shyness; he buried his face in the folds of Kenshin's hakama. Kenshin stroked his hair in an almost absent gesture. "We don't know what his name is. Megumi and Sanosuke have been calling him Kenji." He confessed the last with a faint smile.

Kaoru glanced up at Kenshin, smiled a bit right back, and said, "I can see why. He likes you."

"Aa. Saito's been trying to find out who his parents were, but we don't even have _their_ names."

"How terrible. We have to do something to help him ..."

"Kaoru ..." Kenshin sighed. It hurt to say it, but he stated firmly. "We can't keep him if he has family. And they may yet turn up."

"If he doesn't," Kaoru said decisively, "We have a new student. C'mon, Kenji. I bet you're hungry."

She held a hand out to the boy. After a moment's hesitation, he reached up for her fingers and she led him off in the general direction of the kitchen.

"Orooo," Kenshin followed. It was a weak joke, but he had to find _something _cheerful. "He's only hungry because he hasn't met your cooking yet, that he ..."

"Kenshin Himura," Kaoru turned around, and fixed him with a wicked glare. "I'll have you know _Yahiko_ is doing the cooking today."


	8. Chapter 8

Happily Ever

---------------

"Yahiko-san!" Kenji ran across the yard and threw his arms around Yahiko's legs. With utter and absolute glee, he screeched, "You're back!"

"Hi, Kenji-kun," Yahiko ruffled the kid's red curls. "Hey, I was only gone two weeks, not years. Is Kenshin around?"

"In t'kitchen." Kenji said, voice muffled by the fabric of Yahiko's clothing. "He's making dinner."

"You're getting pretty big, aren't you?" Kenji was going to end up taller than Kenshin, Yahiko guessed, by a large amount. Yahiko studied the kid critically for a moment, then decided that 'taller than Kenshin' might happen before the kid hit puberty. _Taller than Yahiko_ was also a likelihood at some point.

"I'm this many," Kenji held up five fingers. That, Yahiko knew, was a guess by Kenshin and Kaoru -- but probably a good one. A year had passed since the brat had come to the dojo; nobody had ever claimed him, and the only clue to his identity remained his mother's jewelry and his father's bible. They didn't know who his parents were -- though Saito's theory was that they had been forced ashore by a merchant vessel when they got sick.

In the past year, Kenji had learned a remarkable amount of Japanese. He was a very bright child.

"Father says you're seventeen!" Kenji caught Yahiko's hand in his own and skipped cheerfully beside him. "You're old like Father and Mother!"

"Father?" Yahiko said, stopping short. _So it's 'father' is it? _

"Kenshin's my father." The kid said, happily, oblivious to the sudden turmoil in Yahiko's heart. "Kaoru's my mommy. They _said_ so. They said it'd be okay with my old mama and daddy. Because my old mama and daddy would want me to have a new mother and father who love me too. Father said they're watching me and smiling because people love me here."

"Father!" Kenji bolted up the steps, wrapped his arms around Kenshin's legs, and hugged him. "Yahiko came _back_! He did! He came back!"

When Yahiko got closer, Kenshin said in a tone of mild apology, "I am sorry, Yahiko. This one thinks Kenji-kun is worried that people who go away might never come back again."

_Because his parents went away and never came back_, Yahiko thought, with a pang of sorrow. He, too, knew what it was to be an orphan. "It's okay." Yahiko smiled, faintly.

"How was the trip?" Kenshin asked as they walked inside.

"Wet." Yahiko said with disgust. He dropped a hand to the hilt of the sakabatou, which he had carried since Kenshin had passed the sword on to him a few months before. "It rained the entire time. I think I've got mold growing in my hair. But we caught the b... bad guy," he censored his original 'bastard' for the benefit of small ears. He paused, then said in a quieter voice, "He's calling you father now?"

Kenshin nodded, eyes searching Yahiko's face. His hand stroked Kenji's hair, which was growing long and thick. "We thought it best. It's been a year, Yahiko. We've exhausted every lead. If he has family, this one has no idea how to find them. We're his family, now, that we are."

"I ... see."

"Yahiko?" Kenshin, ever perceptive, asked quietly. "What's wrong?"

Once upon a time, Yahiko would have been much more loudly upset. Now, though, he just stood in stunned silence. _Kenshin. Has a son. Adopted, a son. Will he have time for me? _And a very small voice in his head whispered,_ Why didn't he adopt _me

"It's nothing, Kenshin. Just a bit surprised, I guess."

_I thought they'd make him a student. An apprentice. Not a son! _He wailed mentally.

Kenshin picked up Kenji, balancing him on his hip. Yahiko had the uncomfortable feeling that Kenshin _knew _ he was jealous. After a moment, the man who had raised him said, "Sano's trying to get this one to go out tonight. Dice and drinking is what he said. Why don't you come?"

"I want to come too!" Kenji begged.

"Sorry, Kenji-kun," Kenshin caressed his son's hair fondly, without looking down at him. "It's a night for grown ups."

"Awwwww ..." A whine, from the kid, that was only half-hearted.

"Sure. Sure, I'll come." Yahiko said. _Did he just call me a 'grown up'? _Yahiko blinked, and grinned, suddenly feeling a whole lot better. _He did! _


	9. Chapter 9

-1Happily Ever

---------------------

Saito frowned at the letter. It was in a Western alphabet, though his name and the precinct's location was recognizable in characters on the front of the envelope -- albeit with a couple of mistakes.

Western alphabet. Who would be writing him a letter from the West? He could count on one hand the number of people he knew who were foreigners, and all of them would have written him a letter in a language he could _read_.

Getting this translated was going to be a bitch. He'd need to determine what language it was _in_, first, then find someone who could both read the letter _and _understand the language.

He dropped the letter on his desk; it was a puzzle to solve another day.

The letter would remain unread for a very long time.


	10. Chapter 10

-1Happily Ever

-------------------

"Beloved," Kaoru said, coming up behind Kenshin and wrapping her arms around him from behind. She nuzzled his neck, "Are you going to the market today?"

"Aa." Kenshin leaned back into her embrace. With a smile, he said, "Maybe later, now."

She giggled, "You know, we could send Kenji after the vegetables for dinner." She then murmured a few suggestions into his ear about just how the time could be spent while Kenji was fetching the dinner's ingredients.

"Oroooo, Kaoru!" He laughed.

"Kenji likes running errands, I think. We should really send him out more often ..." Kaoru nibbled at his ear lobe.

"Aa, that we should. I thinklike Kenji running errands too!" Kenji, at ten, wasn't nearly as independent as some ten year olds Kenshin could have named -- but going to the market and buying produce was well within his grasp. That would conveniently give them at least an hour -- maybe more -- by themselves, since Kenji was a rather well-loved child and he wouldn't be able to go through the market without being hailed by at least a dozen friends, young and old.

With a bit of a giggle, and one last nibble, Kaoru let go of him and walked to the kitchen door. "Kenji-kun!"

"Yes, Mommy?" The boy appeared promptly. Five years had seen the boy grow tall, and Yahiko's frequent predictions of, _Boy's gonna be a giant when he's grown_ looked to be coming true -- he was already as tall as Kenshin. It was a leggy, gangly type of height; Kenji was all hands and feet and elbows and knees, skinny, with freckles and red hair that refused to be tamed. And he had glasses which always managed to be crooked on his angular face, but were very necessary; the kid was half blind with them and lost without them.

Kenshin noted his fingers were stained with ink. He'd been drawing, then. Katsu had been giving him lessons -- Kenji showed some promise as an artist.

_And for this old samurai, the thought of a son who is an artist and nothing more is truly a glorious one._

Kaoru was teaching him to fight, of course, and he was passably good at it -- and his height meant he normally sparred with the older boys, or with Kaoru herself rather than the children his own age. He would never be brilliant with a sword -- not like his father, or like Yahiko (who was following in Kenshin's footsteps, much to Kenshin's pleasure)

"I want you to run into town and get some peas and radishes. But turn around ..." Kaoru made a spinning gesture with her hand.

"Aw, Mommmy ..." Kenji protested not the errand but her attention on his hair. It was curly, thick, and absolutely untamable despite Kaoru's best efforts -- it was currently loose, framing his hair in a halo of frizzy red curls.

"You look like a little wild man." Kaoru snorted. She pulled a comb out of the sleeve of her kimono and raked it as gently as she could through that thick mass of tangles. Having forced it into something resembling submission, she pulled it back into a pony-tail that poofed out and bounced more than flowed when he moved.

"Mooommmmy ..." He protested, when she wasn't fast enough for his preferences.

"Want me to braid it?"

"_No!_" He said, escaping from her grasp.

Kenshin, lips twitching with suppressed laughter, watched the boy go out the gate. Kenji's hair was something of a long-running dojo joke; Kaoru was constantly trying to control it, Kenji was persistent in resisting her best efforts, and the rest of the Kenshin-gumi seemed to find their minor battles hysterically funny including, at times, Kenshin himself. Mostly because it was a case of 'unstoppable force' -- Kaoru in mommy-mode -- versus 'immovable object' -- Kenji at his stubborn worst.

Once he was out of earshot, Kenshin commented, "It would be easiest if he cut that hair short, would it not?"

"He wants hair like his father, which means _long_." Kaoru sighed, aggravated that her son was going out in public with hair that rather resembled the picture of a western clown she'd seen once.

"But ..." Kenshin sighed. Inspiration struck. "Maybe if I cut mine off ...?"

"Absolutely not!" Kaoru swung around on him so quickly she startled him. Hands on her hips, sounding absolutely outraged, she declaed, "Himura Kenshin, if you cut your hair short, I'll kill you myself!"

"You might have to cut this one's head off to do it." Kenshin joked, holding his hands up in mock-warding gestures.

Kaoru sobered, suddenly and frowned at him.

"What is it?"

"Sometimes ... sometimes I wonder if the madman was right. You're almost forty, Kenshin."

He sobered. Connor MacLeod -- the madman -- had been a family joke for years. But Kaoru was right. He was almost forty.

And he still looked like a youth.

Because he had no answer to that, he simply reached for her, and pulled her into his arms, and did his best to thoroughly distract her for the next hour.


	11. Chapter 11

Happily Ever

------------------

It was a cold snowy day in the January of Kenshin's fortieth year when he was Challenged for the first time, and he truly came to know what he was.

An impossibly strong _ki _washed over him as he walked through the market, one he hadn't felt in nine years. He spun around, feet crunching in the accumulating snow, looking for the madman. It felt the same -- he hadn't forgotten that unusual power.

It wasn't the madman, though. A slim figure, definitely Japanese, was staring at him from across the market. The man had that _armed with sharp steel _feel, despite no sword in evidence. Kenshin remembered Connor MacLeod's sword appearing from nowhere, and a chill ran down his spine.

Kenshin bore no sword. He'd given the sakabatou up, to Yahiko, on Yahiko's fifteenth birthday and had gone unarmed since. Truthfully, he didn't miss it, or what it stood for -- the symbolism of _not _carrying a weapon had appealed greatly to him at the time.

And Kenshin had thought he no longer needed a weapon, not in these peaceful times. The madman's words of warning had almost been forgotten. But now, his hand itched for the comfort of a hilt attached to a long blade. The man had the flat, unwavering stare of a killer. Kenshin _knew _that look.

So he smiled, instead of offering a threat, and nodded politely to the man, and turned on his heel and left. He had no quarrel with the man, and wanted none. Perhaps nothing would come of this.

The man followed him. Kenshin sighed, and cut down an alley, hoping that he was mistaken -- that the man was just taking the same path and not actually coming after him. But the stranger turned the same way, and that was too much coincidence, so Kenshin stopped and turned to face him.

Kenshin wasn't about to run; the man was young -- perhaps twenty. He figured there were few twenty year olds in this time and place who could fight at his level. How would they learn? Swords were forbidden. The Hikos of the world were dying out, and samurai now were businessmen, journalists and politicians.

"My name is Ensa Kyoto," the man said, sounding formal.

"Kenshin Himura. This one has no desire to fight you," Kenshin said, with more calm than he felt. He truly didn't want a fight; he had so much to live for, these days, and no weapon to defend himself with.

"Desire or not, you will, or die," the man snorted. "It is the Game."

"I am not playing your Game." Kenshin kept his hands down and did not crouch into a fighting stance. He still hoped for a peaceful resolution, though his instincts said this was not going to happen. "It is an abomination."

"Then you're a fool. I bet you don't even know how to hold a sword. You're young, aren't you? A fool, from this time." The man sounded disgusted. "Easy prey. Your attitude will be your death."

"I well know the ways of killing. I have sworn never to kill again, and I will not do so now."

A sword flashed into the man's hands. Kenshin blinked, not having seen where it came from. _Now _Kenshin bent at the knees, hakama brushing the ankle-deep snow. A swift kick, perhaps, to disarm the man -- punch to the jaw, then ... but still, he pointed out, "I have no weapon. Attacking this one lacks honor."

The stranger shrugged. "You obviously know what you are; it is your choice not to carry a weapon."

The man's stance was ... perfect. _Samurai, _Kenshin realized_. He's well trained. Experienced. _

The madman had said that Immortals could live millenia. _If he was right, I could be facing a man with centuries of experience, _Kenshin thought, with alarm. This was, perhaps, not the twenty year old inexperienced idiot that he'd been expecting.

He dropped into a fighting crouch, eying the man, who had slid his sword back into a sheath. _Now _he could see the sheath. Where had it come from?

It would be battoujitsu, then ...

The attack, when it came, was blindingly fast.

_He's as good as I am! _Kenshin realized. He'd been expecting a competent attack, but not the sheer speed and power ...

He had intended to catch the blade between his hands, but his palms clapped together and missed the strike entirely because of the unexpected speed, and the steel drove deeply into his shoulder. The impact drove him to his knees; he heard his bones shatter. Blood sprayed.

Kenshin knew, then, that it was all over. He would die in an alley behind the market. Before he could recover from the blow, the man spun around and ran him through, the passage of the blade feeling more like heat and pressure than pain. Consciousness began to fade ...

_Kaoru. Kenji. Yahiko. Sanosuke. I'm so sorry ... I don't even get to say goodbye ..._

---------------

What prompted Saito to take that alley that day, he later never knew. But he came around the corner to see a man with a glittering naked blade in one hand, raised for a beheading blow. Blood stained the snow crimson ... and the man crumpled at the swordsman's feet was terribly familiar. Saito saw blood, far too much blood, and hair almost as red, and a familiar winter coat.

"HEY!" Saito drew his katana, "You! Stop!"

The man paused, then raised his blade aggressively. "This is no business of yours, policeman."

"That's my ..." Friend? "I know that man!"

_Knew, maybe_, a tiny voice in the back of Saito's head whispered.

"Drop the sword!" Saito charged forward.

The man didn't drop it. He lifted the blade aggressively, and the fight that followed was ferocious -- the guy fought fully on a level with Kenshin or Aoshi or any of the other brilliant swordsmen that Saito knew. _Saito_ was supremely, coldly, furious. Saito had a _reason _to kill the bastard, and he was focused with intent rage on killing the man. The stranger quickly changed from aggression to retreat -- not because he couldn't win (they truly were equally matched) but perhaps because he didn't want to risk losing.

"Himura!" Saito knelt beside him, letting the stranger get away. He'd find him later, and make sure he _paid_. But if there was anything he could do for Kenshin now, he would.

Kenshin coughed blood. Copious amounts of frothy blood. His eyes focused with recognition on Saito's face. Weakly, voice bubbling through blood, he said, "Tell Kaoru ... tell her ..."

The light died from his eyes. Knowing Kenshin, Saito figured that the message could have been either _Tell her I'm sorry _or _tell her I love her_... but he'd never know for sure.

"DAMN it." Saito said, "Himura, it's not supposed to end this way!"

With a frustrated oath, Saito bolted after Kenshin's murderer. But he was long gone, lost in the evening gloom.

----------------------


	12. Chapter 12

Happily Ever

---------------------

Kaoru looked up, as the door slid open, expecting Kenshin to walk through. He'd been running errands for Megumi's clinic that day, and was supposed to pick up dinner on the way home. It was hours past the time he'd said he would be home, but she hadn't really been worried -- perhaps something had come up at the clinic.

Sanosuke was in the doorway, covered in snow; behind him, lit by the lamp she'd left out for Kenshin's return, she could see fat white flakes swirling down. The storm looked like it wasn't going to let up in the near future, and she'd been contemplating the pleasant prospect of playing in the snow with her son and husband in the morning. The last time they'd had this much snow, Yahiko and Tsubame and their little ones had come over with Sanosuke trailing behind, and they'd built snow forts with the kids.

Sanosuke's expression was terrible. She met his eyes and _knew. _This was not a social call; this was not Sanosuke coming to beg dinner and company because Megumi was working late and he was bored. She knew they'd sent Sanosuke to bring bad -- unutterably bad -- news to her because he was their best friend and, really, the only choice for this job.

She_ knew_, seeing his face, that there would be no games in the snow tomorrow. She closed her eyes and could picture Kenshin easily, could see him crouched behind the snow-covered well, his red hair a shocking contrast against the white, breath coming in rapid puffs. He was out of breath in the cold air and his shoulders were heaving his eyes gleaming with mischief and joy. In her head, he was just waiting for her to stick her head up above the battlements of her fort so he could nail her with a snowball.

That had been last winter. She'd been looking forward to such a day again all year ... snow rarely came to Tokyo in quantities like this.

The horror crept over her slowly at first, then suddenly let loose in an avalanche of grief. She asked, hoarsely, "How?"

"A swordsman in an alley."

"But ..." A wail. She sank to her knees, legs unable to support her weight.

"Saito said it was murder. Kenshin didn't even have a weapon. The man just cut him down ..." Sanosuke's voice shook, with anger and grief. She could see rage in his eyes.

"Kenshin ..." The world was spinning.

Sano knelt beside her, and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. "Kaoru-chan, I'm so, so incredibly sorry. We're going to catch the bastard, I swear it to you. He won't get away with this."

"That won't bring him back ..." she whispered. "I just want him back!"

"I know," Sanosuke said, simply. "So do I. So do I."

------------------------------


	13. Chapter 13

-1Happily Ever

-----------------------

Some wit had named Himura's closest friends the 'Kenshin-gumi,' and the name had stuck.

Saito had brought the body to the clinic, and Kenshin's friends had gathered later. Saito surveyed them, trying to keep his own grief off his face. Kenshin was not, he told himself firmly, a friend. They had no quarrel these days, but he'd never call the man anything other than a respected ally -- even if he suspected that Kenshin secretly thought differently.

Still, Kenshin ... grew on you.

Well, maybe they were friends by now. With reluctance. And he'd never actually admit to it.

His quarrel had been with the Battousai, who was, as far as he was concerned, dead. That left Kenshin Himura ... a man whom Saito had seen do great good.

Word hadn't gotten out past his closest friends yet, so only the Kenshin-gumi were here. Later, Saito figured this part of the city would be in an uproar._ And then, a state funeral, probably. He wouldn't let anyone honor him in life, but I'm willing to bet his funeral is going to be a rather large affair. _

Kaoru sat on a chair, wrapped in a blanket, eyes a thousand miles away. Kenji sat beside her on the floor; the boy was methodically ripping a piece of paper into very tiny pieces. He looked as lost as his mother, really. Tae sat next to her, rubbing Kaoru's back, tears streaming down her face.

Saito gave Kaoru a few days to get mad. She would, he thought, and he made a mental note to keep an eye on her -- he wouldn't be surprised at all if she tried to take the murderer out herself. And _not _with a shinai.

Yahiko was quivering with fury, ignoring Tsubame's rather worried attempts to calm him down. That, too, was no surprise. His hand was resting on Kenshin's sakabatou, and Saito made another mental note, this one to offer Yahiko a loan of a different sword. Yahiko could certainly kill with the reversed-blade katana, but what sort of legacy would it be to use Kenshin's sword to kill his murderer?

For any other man, an appropriate one. Not for Kenshin.

_Is he good enough?_

Saito made a third mental note, and that was to make Yahiko spar against him again. It had been awhile since he'd seen the young swordsman in action -- Saito knew that Yahiko was good, but wasn't sure if he was good enough to pose a threat to Kenshin's killer. If he _wasn't _good enough, Saito was perfectly willing to break Yahiko's arm or leg so he'd be unable to fight until Saito had a chance to track the bastard down himself.

The Kenshin-gumi had lost Kenshin; they didn't need to lose Yahiko, too.

Sanosuke had Megumi wrapped in his arms; Megumi appeared to be crying. Sano met Saito's eyes over Megumi's head, glare burning and angry.

Fourth mental note. Beat the crap out of Sanosuke on general principles; it would be therapeutic for both of them.

Saito cleared his throat. "I've got all my men looking for the man. He's dead, he just doesn't know it yet."

Kaoru's head came up, at his words. "Was it someone from Kenshin's past?"

Saito shook his head. "He was only about twenty -- I doubt he was even _alive _during the Revolution."

"Maybe a son ...?" Sanosuke said, clearly trying to make sense of the senseless.

Saito shrugged. "He was too good to be just a thug. He could have been a hired assassin. Kenshin does have enemies still, I'm sure. It doesn't matter, though. He's a dead man."

"I sent a telegram to Kyoto," Tae said, "To my sister. She'll let the Shinsengumi know."

Which meant that Saito could expect at least a half dozen pissed off ninjas hunting the killer, within days. They would be on the next train out, most likely. Saito drew another puff on his cigarette and decided if he wanted to be the one to kill the man, he'd need to hurry.

Dr. Genkai slid open a door and stepped into the room. His expression was dark, troubled; it got the immediate attention of every one in the room. "Kenshin's body is gone," he said, shortly. "Somebody's stolen it."

----------------------


	14. Chapter 14

Happily Ever

-------------------

The river wasn't quite frozen; there was ice at the edges, but the middle was a rushing torrent of black water. Icicles hung from the stone arch of the bridge, and from the overhanging willows, and the snow was calf deep. It was heavy, wet snow -- idly, Kenshin thought he should hurry home and knock the snow off the roof before it caused damage to the dojo from the weight.

Worst storm he'd seen in almost a decade.

Fitting, perhaps, that the weather matched his mood. He wasn't sure he would go home. Or that he had a home to go to.

Well -- maybe he'd go home, deal with the snow, pack his bag, and be gone before anyone saw him. He doubted Kaoru would think about the snow's weight right now, and nobody else among his friends had grown up in the mountains, where heavy snow was a regular event.

He huddled against the cold and the wind, hands in his pockets, sniffing a bit because the chill was making his nose run. It was funny how normal he felt -- his ribs ached, but no worse than after a hard day's work.

"Kenshin?"

He'd known she would come. She always did. In a low voice, he said, without turning, "Kaoru."

"Beloved!" He heard rapid footsteps crunching through the snow. She stopped, a few feet behind him, and hesitantly said, "Ken...shin?"

He didn't even want to turn around. He didn't want to see the fear in her eyes that he knew would be there. He could hear the hesitation in her voice, and she hadn't touched him. If he turned, he knew he'd find her with her hands tucked in her kimono sleeves, blue eyes misting with tears. She knew, too, that this was unnatural, perhaps evil. An abomination.

"What am I, Kaoru?" He asked.

"An idiot."

_That _response he hadn't been expecting. He turned, and found she had her hands on her hips, no tears in her eyes, and a glare for him. He'd been very wrong about her reaction. He blinked, surprised.

"Kenshin Himura, if you run away now, I swear on everything holy I will track you down and kill you myself, as many times as it takes to make it stick. You are not allowed to come back from the dead and then _leave _me."

Anger, not fear. Justified anger. She'd been grieving him, now had found him alive, yet feared he would leave her. Of course she was pissed, and thoroughly so -- now that he thought it through and now that he accepted she wasn't terrified of him, he realized her anger was quite predictable. And his fault, too.

He'd been contemplating leaving without even a goodbye ... and she knew it.

"I knew you would try to run away, as soon as Dr. Genkai said your body was gone." She met his look with eyes that dared him to even try it.

"But ... Kaoru, this isn't normal. People will _talk_. People will be frightened of me. What am I supposed to tell everyone?" He wasn't even using his normal humility when he referred to himself, he was so upset. He realized this, and swallowed hard. "Kaoru, I don't want to leave, but what do I tell them?"

"How about the truth?" Kaoru stepped closer to him. "Trust your friends, Kenshin. They're good friends. They can handle the truth."

"What's the truth -- that I'm some sort of an oni?"

"If you're an oni, you're a good one." She stopped a foot away, and then reached and caught his hands in hers. "Beloved, people _love _you and their joy at finding you alive will outweigh their fear of what you are -- at least, for the people that matter. And anyway, as much as I hate to admit it, the madman's explanation makes sense. He said this would happen -- that you would not age, and you haven't. That men would try to kill you, and they have. And that you could not die by anything other that beheading, and you did not. He was _right, _Beloved."

He sighed, then, suddenly, wrapped his arms around her. He admitted, "If not for you, Kaoru, I would have left today. Very well, I will try the simple truth and see what happens."

Her eyes were dancing when she leaned back to meet his gaze. She said, in a tone of vast amusement, utter relief, and a good bit of mischief, "I cannot _wait _to see the looks on their faces when they see you."

"Sanosuke's going to think I'm a demon," Kenshin predicted, letting her tow him in the general direction of the dojo.

"Aa. But Sano also still thinks locomotives are demons and photographs steal one's soul." Kaoru snickered.

It was her amusement that did it ... he exhaled a sigh of relief. "Kaoru?"

"Yes?"

"I thought you would be frightened of me."

"Never!" She said, with absolute conviction. "I could never be frightened of you."


	15. Chapter 15

-1Happily Ever

-------------------

"Sanosuke." The man was leaning on a bridge railing, huddled under a cloak, staring down the frozen water.

"I saw you dead." Sanosuke didn't turn to face him. Didn't look at him. So someone had told him already that the missing 'body' was alive.

Kenshin winced, mentally at the tone of Sano's voice. The others had been easy enough -- Megumi had poked and prodded him, and then declared with firm conviction that she'd _made a mistake_, and he'd never died in the first place. That would be her story for the rest of her life, despite the fact that his wounds were also nearly half healed. She never did believe in his Immortality.

Yahiko had simply said, "I always knew you weren't human ..." in a tone of annoyance. "Figured that madman might have been right for years. I should have placed a bet on it. And Kenshin? Scare me like that again and you'll regret it."

Kenji had simply studied him with silent suspicion, but Kenshin figured that was at least partly because Kenji hadn't forgiven him yet for dying rather than accepted his resurrection. Fathers weren't supposed to die, and that had happened to Kenji twice now. Kenshin understood, and knew simply to give the boy time.

Tsubame had hugged him.

Tae had laughed and said he wasn't getting out of his tab that easy, and by the way, when was he going to pay?

Saito, when Kenshin met him walking down a street, had nearly swallowed his cigarette. This might have partly been because Kenshin had no mercy on the man, and had simply waved and hailed him from half a block away. It was the first time he'd ever seen Saito _truly _rattled.

And after Kenshin had explained the facts as he knew them, Saito, police man, had snorted and said, "Well, that explains a few things. Like the headless bodies. And that doctor during the revolution ..."

To Sano, now, Kenshin said quietly, "This one is sorry."

Sanosuke whirled, fists coming up. "I saw you _dead_, Kenshin."

"Aa. This one was."

"You're not supposed to die!"

"Apparently," Kenshin said, with a flicker of real humor, "Not."

"Yahiko said you're not human -- you're some kind of an Immortal. That you'll live forever unless someone cuts your head off. That's not natural."

"It isn't. But it doesn't change much." Kenshin lifted one shoulder in half a shrug. "If this one lives forever, will that be enough time to atone for all the grief caused by my actions? This one thinks not. It is easy to think that this one does not deserve this life with Kaoru, and all my friends. How can this one be happy, when this one caused so much pain for others? And now ... perhaps this is cruel punishment or a fitting tribute to my victims."

Sanosuke sighed. He said, "Kenshin, if I hadn't met you when I did, I'd likely have been dead in a gutter within a year. I had nothing to live for, and a whole lot of anger in my heart. You showed me ..." he swallowed, adam's apple bobbing. "... Kenshin, you've touched so many lives for the good."

"And yet ..." Kenshin sighed. "It will never be enough."

Sanosuke put his hands in his pockets, and said wryly, "It isn't ever."

"Please do not be frightened of me, Sano," Kenshin said, quietly, leaning on the railing. "We've been friends for a long time. It is understandable if ... if knowing what this one is changes things ... but ... you'll never need to fear me."

"Kenshin," Sano said, roughly, "Don't be an idiot."

When Sanosuke suddenly hugged him, Kenshin was shocked, for a second, then he murmured, "Sano? Thank you."

"Yeah. Well. You should get back to the missy. That man might try again with more success. And I don't think I could take it if I had to tell Kaoru _twice _in one day that you were dead."

"Aa. And Sanosuke, thank you for that. For being there for her."


	16. Chapter 16

Happily Ever

-------------------

It was early in the morning; the sun was barely up and Sanosuke hadn't yet been to bed. He'd spent most of the night consuming a fair amount of sake and contemplating Kenshin' rather earth-shattering revelation. Now he stood in front of the clinic, watching the sun rise.

_And here I've been telling him all these years that he's just a man. And he's been something more, all along._

Huh. Sano knew he was more than a bit drunk, so this might not make sense after he'd slept it off, but he'd come to the conclusion that Kenshin being something-more-than-human was perfectly okay with him. Because it was Kenshin and that felt somehow appropriate.

And if anyone deserved to live forever, it was Kenshin. _He'll make a hell of a difference over that very long lifetime. Lots of good deeds. People saved, hearts healed, bad guys vanquished. Because that's what Kenshin does. He's an amazing man. Maybe the reason that he's Immortal is so that he has longer to make a difference.  
_

_Lucky bastard. Wish _I _could live forever._

Footsteps crunching through the snow made him look up. Saito was coming down the lane, perhaps headed for his own house.

Sanosuke fought down an urge to sneer in dislike and say something barbed and rude to the man. Their first meeting had been rather ... anger making ... and he'd never really revised his opinion of the man, even if Kenshin seemingly had.

Then he realized Saito was rather a mess. He wasn't going home, he was planning to visit the clinic -- because he was injured. His uniform was covered in blood, and rags stained with crimson were wrapped around his upper arm. His leg was also bleeding; his trousers were wetly stained from thigh to boot.

"I 'd like to know what the other guy looks like." Sanosuke said, with some snark. "You're losing your touch, Saito. You never get hurt in a fight."

Saito lifted an eyebrow. "The other guy is missing his head."

"Oh."

"Quite."

"Are you going to tell Kenshin?" Sanosuke asked, curiously, trailing after Saito as the man headed for the clinic's front door.

"Would you?" Saito replied. He paused and gave Sanosuke a frowning look that implied Sanosuke was being stupid.

"I'd be inclined not to. I'd have to deal with Kenshin-angst if I did." Sanosuke snorted a laugh of comprehension. This was _not _something Kenshin needed to know about.

"Then we understand each other." Saito nodded curtly and opened the door with his good arm. He went inside, leaving Sanosuke standing in the snow.

Sano snorted a low laugh. "I could almost _like _the man for that ..."


	17. Chapter 17

-1Happily Ever

------------------

Author's Notes: Richard Marshall is not a canon character, but people following the Swordsman universe may want to take note of the chapters concerning him. He'll be back ...

(edit -- fixed all the missing "Jessicas" I think. Weird. Character's name just completely disappeared from the text. Cue spooky music ...)

------------------

"Hey, Jessica , have a look at those two."

Jessica Marshall glanced up from her bowl of noodles in the Akabeko at her best friend's words. Tabitha giggled and indicated the objects of her appreciation with a significant glance.

Two men had entered the restaurant, both rather distinctive. One was short, wiry, with a flaming mane of straight red hair caught in a pony tail to the middle of his back. _Short _meant that the top of the guy's head was barely above the level of her chin, if she guesstimated right. Since the council had sent her here months before, she'd gotten used to being taller than many of the men, but it appeared this guy was shorter than most.

He moved like an athlete, and was dressed like a samurai -- the real thing, albeit peacock bright. His clothing looked worn and frequently mended; the bright colors were starting to fade. She looked for a sword and didn't see one, though he had heavy staff held in one hand. _Swords are illegal, though I've seen a few samurai who defy that edict. He's a bit young to have seen any fighting, though -- maybe just a son of one of the last of the real ones. _

He had a cross-shaped scar on his cheek, long healed, but still noticeable.

The other man was much taller -- well over six feet. In comparison to his tiny company, he was a veritable giant. The two were obviously friends, however -- good friends, by their body language. Or maybe family ...

The taller man's hair was a slightly darker red and caught back in a wrist-thick braid to the middle of his back. By the texture, she suspected his hair would be ferociously curly -- braiding, or cutting it extremely short was probably the only way to deal with it. _Would have thought a guy would have gone for the second option, though. _

He was also extraordinarily fit -- she could see the lines of hard muscles through his clothing; he wore light trousers and a shirt well suited to this sticky August weather.

"Yummy." Tabitha said. She hailed their server, a young woman, and asked, "Tsubame, who are the hunks? Do they come here often?"

The woman looked confused for a moment, then blinked. "Oh, you mean Kenji and Kenshin?"

_Matching names, _ Jessica noted. Coincidence or relatives? They didn't look like brothers; the difference in height was hard to explain if they had the same parents.

"Unless there's two other red-haired Adonises in here." Tabitha _liked _men.

Tsubame giggled suddenly, blushed a bit, and said, low-voiced, "Kenshin's the short guy; he's very much married, sorry. The taller man is Kenji, though, and _he _is single. You want me to introduce you? If you'd like to share a table, I can ask if they want to join you -- if I know Kenji, he'd say yes."

"Introduce Jessica." Tabitha said, with a laugh. "She needs to find a man more than I do."

_Because you have three beaus already, minx, _Jessica thought, with amusement. _Thanks for the charity._

"What's his story?" asked, before Tsubame could head off to the two. "The tall man. I don't see many Westerners in here."

"Who, Kenji?" Tsubame shrugged. "It's sad, really. His parents died of influenza, almost twenty years ago. Nobody even knew their names. Kenshin's a _lot _older than he looks -- he's in his fifties -- and he raised Kenji as his son."

"Fifties?" said, surprised. She exchanged a look of slow surmise with Tabitha. "He doesn't look it."

"Kenshin's a lot of things he doesn't look," Tsubame said, with another giggle. "I've known him most of my life -- he pretty much raised my husband, as well, since he was ten -- Yahiko turns thirty this year, so that's been twenty years now."

Tabitha raised an eyebrow. Jessica said, "Yes, invite them to share our table. This should be ... interesting."

_Huh. My uncle needs to know about this man ... _

---------------

"Kenshin-san," Tsubame said, "My tables are full, but you and your son have an invitation to share a table with the two foreign women."

Kenshin said, "Oro?"

Meaning, _I'm married and this has the potential to piss Kaoru off. _

Kenji said, low, "They're _cute_."

Kenshin glanced up at his son, and bit back a laugh. Kenji reminded him of a dog who'd just spotted quail in the grass; he was practically standing on one leg and pointing with his nose at them. Girls. Pretty girls. Exotic foreign pretty girls!

Tsubame's expression was merry. "They come in here fairly often. They're a bit forward, the two of them, but I think I like them. The blond girl's uncle works for the British embassy -- her father's dead, I guess."

"Cute." Kenji repeated, which was apparently the most articulate response he could come up with.

"Go on," Tsubame gave Kenji a bit of a shove in their direction. "They said you were cute too."

_That _was a statement that wasn't likely to render Kenji articulate any time soon! Kenshin found he was having a very hard time keeping a laugh from bubbling up at his son's expense; he _was _grinning now.

_Ah, well, Kaoru will understand that this is for our son. _Kenshin hoped that was the case -- because the truth was that he'd never even considered the charms of another woman since meeting her, other than casual appreciation of a pretty face in the "can't help but notice ..." sense. Kenji was right -- they were beautiful girls.

Kenshin exchanged a look with Tsubame. Tsubame definitely had a look of amusement in her eyes -- the woman's sense of humor was quietly understated, but it was definitely there. And even if she hadn't had one to start with, several years of marriage to Yahiko would have required that she develop a sense of humor out of pure self defense, if nothing else. _And it's probably fortunate that she's incredibly patient, as well, _Kenshin thought -- because Yahiko could test even Kenshin's formidable reserves of tolerance.

_She says they're 'forward_.' Huh. Deciding this was likely to be interesting, if nothing else, Kenshin followed Kenji to the table, with Tsubame bringing up the rear. Tsubame made introductions, then left -- though Kenshin noted that she was lingering within earshot.

Kenji was now dead silent, regarding the girls with an expression that was almost frightened. Kenshin sighed, and said, "You'll have to forgive my son; he's a bit on the simple side ... but I swear, he's a _nice _boy even if he can't talk."

"Father!" Kenji found his voice. His glare was positively deadly; Kenshin responded with his patented sunny and utterly innocent rurouni smile. He swore he could hear Tsubame choke in the background -- or that might have been Tae; both of them knew him well enough to interpret that look in this context as, "What? What? Who, me? You didn't just hear _me _say that, did you?"

The girls laughed behind their hands, which made Kenji flush bright pink in addition to scowling at his father.

"Father no baka." Kenji muttered under his breath, then took a deep breath, and asked, "So. Do you ladies come here often?"

Giggles, from both of the girls. "A couple of times a week," the taller, blond, girl said -- her name was Jessica Marshall, and her friend was Tabitha Smith.

More silence. Kenshin fought the urge to roll his eyes, Yahiko-style, and instead asked, "So where are you two from?"

"England." Jessica said, as Tabitha simultaneously stated, "London."

"Your Japanese is very good. Have you been here long?" Kenshin took pity on his son, who was clearly still too stunned by their beauty (or at least, too tongue-tied by the idea of _exotic foreign girls_!) to be articulate.

"Three years. My uncle's an officer in the military; he brought me here to learn about Japan, and Tabitha to keep me company," Jessica explained, glancing at her friend. Tabitha dimpled.

_They're well-bred, I'd bet. Which doesn't explain why they're eating beef hot pot in the Akabeko except, maybe, they simply have adventurous streaks. _This was a reasonably good part of town; Japanese ladies of good character showed up here regularly. No real reason for foreign women not to, except that it just wasn't often done -- the foreigners kept to themselves, mostly.

_Yes, probably just adventurous. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is a mark in their favor. They speak more than good enough Japanese to get by, and nothing untoward will happen to them in this part of town._

Jessica tilted her head and regarded the two of them for a moment before asking, "Pardon me for noticing, but neither of you look Japanese."

"I am," Kenshin said quietly, though even he could not explain his red hair -- his parents had dark hair. Connor MacLeod had said that Immortals were found, not born; maybe that was the explanation. He didn't know. It wasn't like he could ask his Mother and Father how they'd come upon him at this late date, and he had never been back home to talk to anyone there -- the villagers had, after all, sold him into slavery. He had no desire to return there -- that was a world of hurt he had no intention of entering.

As far as he was concerned, however, Japan was his home, he was Japanese, and he wasn't going to question things further. "My wife and I adopted Kenji when he was orphaned, about eighteen years ago, that we did."

Jessica nodded. "You don't look old enough for that, either. You must have been young yourself."

"Father's just very well preserved," Kenji shrugged, which was the Kenshin-gumi's standard response to questions about Kenshin's age. (Though Sanosuke sometimes added, "We used lots of salt.")

Kenshin then endured the usual stares as they searched his features for _any _sign of age and found none. He plastered a cheerful smile on his face and hoped the novelty would wear off soon enough.

When Jessica tilted her head sideways and said slyly, "You sure that's the whole story? Because I know some people who'd give their heads to look like you do ..." Kenji made a choking noise. Kenshin himself nearly bit his tongue. He stared at them, smile vanishing and adrenalin suddenly coursing through his veins.

Jessica lifted an eyebrow at him. "You really should meet my uncle. I think you have a lot in common, like very long life spans."

"Ah." It was Kenshin's turn to be inarticulate.

Kenji said coldly, "I'm not sure we want anything to do with other Immortals."

"Kenji-kun, it's okay," Kenshin said, recovering from his surprise. In a tone of mild rebuke, he said, "There is no need to speak in such a rude tone to these ladies, that there is not."

"Father ...!" Kenji protested. When Kenshin merely frowned at him, he sighed, and said, "I'm sorry."

"Do not mind my son," Kenshin said, to the women. "He's simply concerned for me. I've met two others like me, and both attempted to kill me. Otherwise, I have avoided my --" he hesitated, hating to say the word that set him apart from his friends and family, "-- my kind. I've sensed a few, but I'd rather not be forced to fight."

"The second one _did _kill you," Kenji growled.

Kenshin tilted his head sideways and regarded Jessica with a measuring look. He was torn, really -- part of him wanted to practice his usual policy towards others like him, which was determined avoidance. If he didn't meet them, he didn't have to risk a fight. Since he was reluctant to start carrying a sword again, even a sakabatou, avoiding other Immortals was definitely the smartest course of action.

_And I'm also probably avoiding the subject because I find it so horrible to contemplate. Am I a monster, some sort of supernatural predator, almost a vampire, living off the energy of others?_

On the other hand, he had _questions_ that perhaps only another one like him could answer. He'd been waiting for a good opportunity; perhaps this was the chance he'd wanted.

"Tell me, does your uncle have many friends like me?" He figured that would be a telling question -- if an Immortal had other Immortal friends, perhaps he would be less likely to immediately issue a Challenge.

"A few." Jessica shrugged. "That he's identified to me. He doesn't talk about it a lot. At any rate, there's a Shinto shrine near here. I can ask my uncle to meet you there this afternoon. I'm sure he'll come."

"Aa. That would be acceptable." Kenshin nodded. Only later would he appreciate just how perceptive this woman was, when he learned about holy ground and the sanctuary it provided.

----------------------

Richard Marshall's first thought, when he felt the other Immortal's buzz and turned and saw Kenshin, was that it was a small miracle that the man had lived into his fifties, given his size and delicate appearance. His second was that he'd died at exactly the right time -- Richard couldn't have picked a better time for preserving the man's almost ethereal good looks. _Ah, the beauty of youth. He'll look that way forever. _

Critically, and more seriously, he assessed the other man as he approached. _Very short. Too light in weight for any method of fighting that emphasizes strength -- and he probably can't throw a punch for crap because he won't have any weight behind it. That lack of height also means a lack of reach -- that's going to be a handicap for him too, all other things being equal._

Still, the man's garb indicated he was a swordsman already. The hakama he wore was practical; it would hide his footwork during a fight. And if he was in his fifties, he'd likely fought during the revolution here -- Richard knew that had been a bloody and brutal affair.

_Bet he's fast as hell, though. Little shrimpy guys like that often are. _

No sword at all -- his _ki _indicated he was unarmed, and also that he was very, very wary.

"Greetings, are you Marshall-san?" No sign of that caution in his voice, and his expression was utterly unreadable. _I bet he's an experienced swordsman. He's giving nothing away at all. That sort of deadpan expression takes practice.._

"I'm Richard Marshall." He extended a hand in greeting, which Kenshin grasped in a firm handshake. Callused hands indicated that he was either familiar with a sword or used to hard work.

"I am Himura Kenshin."

Richard's eyebrows rose up into his hair. Jessie had mentioned his first name, but either hadn't known his last or was unaware of the significance. A diplomat for years, he recognized the name well -- it was his _job _know history and culture. He glanced from the red hair to the scar on the man's cheek to the _lack _of a sword at Kenshin's waist. Yes, all were correct. This was who he thought it was. "I take it sword fighting lessons are not necessary for you," he murmured.

Kenshin smiled. It was a pleasant smile, but revealed nothing of the man's inner thoughts. "Connor MacLeod said almost the same thing."

"You know Connor?" Richard said, surprised.

"Met him, that I did." Kenshin said. "I thought he was a madman. I wish I could see him and apologize for my rudeness. At the time, however, I was rather annoyed at him."

"Rudeness?" Richard prompted, sensing a great tale there.

"He was not very good, and I'm afraid I bruised him a bit when I disarmed him." This was said with serene oblivion regarding just how many other Immortals would find this tidbit amusing.

Richard grinned and decided, then and there, that he _liked _this man. It was about time someone defeated Connor.

"I'm sure Connor will get over it," Richard said, thinking, _In a few centuries. _"So the legends of the Hitokiri Battousai are correct, then?"

"Which ones?" Kenshin sighed. He added, "I am afraid that some of them are, and some are regrettable exaggerations, and I am proud of none of them."

"But you are a hero!"

"Hardly." Kenshin looked uncomfortable, so the Richard dropped the subject. _Ah, I have him figured out now. He regrets what he did, even though it was probably necessary. A soft man. Though he appears to be relaxing a bit; I can read his expressions now._

"So." Richard said, gesturing towards the shrine's gate. "I promise not to take your head if you promise not to take mine. I propose I buy you a beer; you're the first one of our kind I've met here, and if I might say so myself, I'd rather have you as a friend than an enemy."

Kenshin's lavender eyes were wary -- very, very, very wary. However, the man nodded briefly, and said, "If you don't mind my friends joining us. I'm sure they'll have questions too."

_Friends? _Richard blinked at that concept. "Your friends know what you are?"

The samurai's smile was positively brilliant. "Given that I died and came back to life, I had to tell them something, and I judged the truth was the least complicated."

"You told them the truth."

"Yes."

"And they accepted this?"

"Of course."

Richard lifted an eyebrow. "Really."

---------------------


	18. Chapter 18

-1A Life Lived

----------------------

Kenshin was wary of Richard, for reasons he couldn't quite put a finger on.

The man didn't feel menacing, exactly, but Kenshin's instincts said he was still a threat. He was tall, elegant, cultured. He'd apparently died the first time in his forties; there was a bit of grey in his hair, but not much, and he carried himself well. And he answered many of Kenshin's questions, including some he hadn't known to ask.

"Holy ground's a sanctuary," the man said, over sushi and sake that evening -- Richard's suggestion for going out drinking at a local bar had been modified by the presence of Kaoru and Megumi into a dinner at a local restaurant. He neatly picked up a bit of fish with his chopsticks, with skill that spoke of long practice. This was despite enough sake, in Kenshin's judgment, to have pickled Hiko. "Don't ask me why, I don't know. But even the worst of us respect that -- so if you need respite, or a safe place to meet with a foe or a stranger, use it."

"Who defines what's holy?" That came from Kaoru.

Kenshin flashed her a grin of thanks. It was an excellent question, and one he wouldn't have thought of.

The man shrugged, thought about the answer, and then said, "I guess it's a pretty liberal definition -- it probably has to do with the intent of those who call it holy. And it doesn't have to be ground holy to you, either -- Kenshin could seek refuge in a Christian church, and I _have _used that Shinto shrine before. Kenshin-san, you will simply _know _when you're on holy ground."

Kenshin nodded understanding.

"You're barely drinking," the man scolded. "Don't you like the sake?"

"It's excellent, thank you," Kenshin said, politely, as the man poured him another cup. For Kenshin's weight, he had a lot of tolerance -- but nowhere near what this man did, and he knew it. Still, manners required he consume it. He sighed and downed the cup and made polite noises of enjoyment. In truth, it wasn't very good sake -- it was rather young, and very harsh -- but he wasn't going to tell this man that. Richard had made it clear that he was buying.

"How ... many ... of them, people like Kenshin, are there?" Yahiko asked.

He shrugged. "Thousands, probably. Maybe tens of thousands. Enough that you'll run into people regularly, but not so many that we're noticeable to the mortals."

"What makes us Immortal?" Kenshin said.

"Magic?" By his tone of voice, it was clearly a guess. "I don' know, really. It's a wonderful thing, really, it is. I don' question it too much.'" He hiccupped.

_Drunk_, thought Kenshin, and _Fool. I could take his head, were I inclined, and he wouldn't be able to stop me. _

"I like you, Kenshin," the man slurred -- leaving off the honorific that Kenshin would have expected, as he didn't really consider the man a friend. He didn't know the man, and his instincts were telling him to be careful. Apparently, the feeling wasn't mutual, however -- and the amount of strong drink the man had in his system probably wasn't helping matters. Marshall had clearly deemed _him _a friend.

Kenshin sighed, and glanced at Kaoru, who caught his expression, and said, "Kenshin, it's very late and I'm getting tired. Why don't you walk Marshall-sama home?"

Because Marshall-sama was clearly too drunk to walk himself home. It wouldn't do for the man to pass out in a gutter somewhere, or be robbed because he was wealthy and foreign and alone. Kenshin nodded, and rose.

"But ..." Richard said, a bit of an annoyed whine in his voice.

"My wife has a class to teach in the morning, and I have work to do as well. We should continue this another night, that we should." Kenshin offered the man a hand up.

Richard stood up, a bit steadier than Kenshin really would have expected. He bowed to Kaoru and Megumi, "Ladies," and to Sano, Kenji and Yahiko -- the latter two were taking Kenshin's cue and trying to get Sanosuke to stand up as well, with less success, "Gentleman."

_Less drunk than I thought, or very good at hiding it, _Kenshin thought, walking beside Richard. The man was more-or-less steady on his feet.

"Richard, I have a question -- is there any way to make someone Immortal?" Kenshin asked, once they were out of earshot of the others. He padded beside the man, arms folded and hands tucked into his sleeves for warmth. The night was cool, and threatening to be cold by morning. Autumn was coming.

"You're thinking of your lovely wife." Richard shook his head. "And not that I'm aware of. I'm s-shorry."

"I ... Kaoru is my life, Richard. I would gladly age and die at her side. It feels wrong that I am watching her grow old before my eyes, and yet, I still have the face of a boy." Kenshin let some of his feelings about Kaoru touch his words; the sake he'd consumed helped with this.

Richard snorted. "I'm sure your wife isn't complaining about that pretty face, and having a man with the body of a twenty year old in her bed. I bet she enjoys it."

"You're drunk," Kenshin said, annoyed again. "And that was crude."

"You've not much sense of fun."

Kenshin sighed. He thought Marshall meant well, he just had no sense of decorum. "Kaoru ... I do not deserve her, really, Richard. I've done many evil things. But I'm a weak man, and saying no to Kaoru is beyond my abilities. I cannot help but give her what she desires. And she made it very clear to me that this unworthy one was her greatest heart's desire."

He bowed his head. "When she is gone -- my life shall be a dim shadow of what it is now."

"There will be other women in your life, Kenshin," Richard said. He put a hand out companionably, patting Kenshin's shoulder. "Look at me. I'm eighty, and I'm on my fifth wife."

"If the Gods are willing, I'll still have Kaoru when she's eighty," Kenshin snapped. The thought of life without Kaoru in it was utterly awful -- something that kept him awake in the darkest hours of the night. He paused and questioned, after a bit of mental math, "Five?"

"Bad luck, here and there. One divorce -- she got pregnant and it sure wasn't mine."

"I see." Kenshin had never been able to fathom unfaithfulness; it just wasn't in his nature. He could see that as grounds for divorce, he supposed, but couldn't help but think there had been something wrong with the relationship well before the adultery.

"Kaoru will be a lucky woman if she's eighty and you're still sticking with her," Richard said, with a broad grin. "Real lucky. Makes me laugh to think of a face and body like yours in some old crone's bed ..."

_I do not like this man._

"You are lucky, you know. You're going to have that beautiful face of yours forever." Richard reached a hand out and touched Kenshin's ponytail. "I wish I'd been younger when I died that first time."

Kenshin jerked away, startled and rather unamused. He fixed Richard with a warning glare.

"Oh, relax," Richard scolded. "I like ladies. It's just a shame you're not one, with a face that pretty."

Kenshin scowled intensely. "I think you are drunk, that you are, and you may wish to be silent before you say things you might regret later."

"Probably," Richard said, with cheerful agreement.

They walked in silence for a couple of blocks; Kenshin made sure he was out of touching distance.

"I'm sorry," Richard stated, finally. "I didn't mean to offend you."

"This one is not offended," Kenshin said, stiffly -- he wasn't, he was _annoyed_. There was a difference. It was far from the first time that someone had tried to touch his hair, but it was a liberty he only allowed a few people -- small children who were curious about the color, and, of course, Kaoru. (Thoughts of Kaoru running her hands through his hair made him think of hurrying home.) Besides the fact that he didn't enjoy people in his personal space unless it was Kaoru, it would be very easy for someone to _grab _his hair, yank him off balance and then attack him.

Kenshin, survivor of a thousand battles, was well aware of that vulnerability.

"Ah." Richard gave Kenshin a sideways look that made Kenshin nervous again. What was the man thinking?

Not soon enough for Kenshin's tastes, they reached the man's residence.

"Will you come inside for a bit?"

"Gomen, Marshall-sama, this one needs to return home, that I do."

"Ah, well. It was good to meet you, Kenshin." The man held out a hand.

Kenshin grasped it, then uttered an, "Oro!" of surprise when the man pulled him into a hug. He could have -- and perhaps should have -- ended it there. But he was trying to be polite, so he reluctantly endured it. There were only a very few people who he'd willingly accept a hug from.

The hug turned into an embrace, which didn't exactly surprise him. The man's breath smelled strongly of sake and fish; he pressed his lips to Kenshin's and tried to hold Kenshin close.

Kenshin attempted to simply shove Richard away; Richard's arms grew painfully tight and he wouldn't let go. Kenshin struggled for a moment, twisting his face away; when the man didn't take Kenshin's very strong hint that he was _not _pleased by this turn of events Kenshin lost his temper and with a growled oath he very efficiently drove his fist into Richard's gut. Richard staggered backwards, doubled over, and retched.

"Go home," Kenshin hissed. His eyes were gleaming amber, and he was shaking with anger. "Sleep it off. Touch me again, under any circumstances, and I'll castrate you."

"I'm sorry!" Richard backed up. Kenshin's threat was real; Richard's eyes were startled by the sudden change in his formerly amiable companion. "I'm sorry. It's just ... it's just you reminded me of someone. And you're right, I am drunk."

The man whirled, and nearly running, headed inside.

Kenshin stood, fists balled, by the man's gate for several minutes. Slowly, the amber rage faded from his eyes, replaced by violet confusion. With a very heavy sigh, he muttered, "_Baka_," under his breath, unsure if the baka in question was himself for not picking up on the warning cues first, or the Englishman.

It had not been the first time, of course -- with a face like his, he'd endured far too many unwanted proposals from both sexes. At least this time ...

He stood for a moment in the shadows by the gate, head bowed, arms wrapped around himself before heading home. Old memories bubbled up unbidden and it was a very quiet Kenshin who let himself into the dojo and spent the rest of the evening sitting on the steps and listening to the crickets chirp before heading to bed very late.


	19. Chapter 19

-1--------------

Author's notes: This is a very dark chapter, and was rather difficult to write. I'll give it a warning because Kenshin mentions the likely reason _why _someone would want to buy a very pretty small boy as a slave ... nothing explicit, but some of my readers may want to skip this chapter.

---------------

Kaoru was half awake, listening to Kenshin's soft breathing and the creaking of the house settle.

_Kenji likes the girl, Jessica, _Kaoru thought, absently. _I hope if they hit it off she'll stay here -- I would hate for my boy to move somewhere as far away as England. And I do not even know if her uncle would approve; he's of rather high birth and plenty of money. We're not, at least, not by his standards._

_Ah, but I'm way ahead of things here -- he's only met the girl once! Just silly worries .. _

Beside her, Kenshin twitched and groaned in his sleep, making her jump a bit.

_Dreaming, _she realized, only amused at first. Kenshin dreamed quite a bit, on an amazing variety of subjects, and often talked in his sleep -- she'd had some very entertaining conversations with him over the years. His most recent dream-conversation with her had involved him insisting, with great conviction, that Saito was doing the laundry. Giggling, she'd asked Kenshin what _he _was doing while Saito did the laundry and he'd informed her that he was washing everything that Saito had washed a _second _time because it all smelled like tobacco smoke now. He'd been completely lucid during the conversation, and completely asleep. And he was very, very, pissed at Saito for smoking while doing the laundry!

Kenshin groaned again, and then said, very clearly, "Auntie ..."

_Auntie? _

Amused, and expecting a comical dream-conversation with him, she asked, "What's the auntie doing, Kenshin?"

She'd expected an answer. He generally responded to questions when he was like this.

"Selling Shinta ... don't sell Shinta, Auntie! No! No! Shinta loves you! Don't send Shinta away! Shinta's going to get hurt if you do! No!"

_Shinta? Who's Shinta? _This didn't sound like one of his regular outbursts of nightly surreality. And, _Auntie? Is this someone he knew in his past that he's dreaming about?_

"No!" Louder. "No! Auntie Suri! NO! Don't let them take Shinta! No!"

He was going to wake Kenji, in the next room, at this rate. He was getting pretty loud. Kenji normally slept like a rock, but he had limits.

"Kenshin, wake up." She touched his shoulder. "Koishii, love, it's just a dream. Nobody's taking this Shinta away. You're just ..."

He woke. And then he bolted across the room in one fluid God-like-speed movement. Their blankets, blown aloft by his sudden explosion of terror, landed over her head and she frantically batted them away.

She could hear him breathing harshly; see the brilliant gleam of his eyes in the moonlight coming through the window. His shoulders were heaving; he was shaking. He looked _terrified_. She'd never, ever, seen that expression on his face. She'd seen him mad, seen him grieving, seen him in terrible throes of deep guilt. But she'd never seen that particular look of blind fear on his face before.

"Koishii?" She said, tentatively.

"No!" He sank to his knees, almost falling -- there was an audible thump when he hit the tatami mats.

She stumbled to her feet, thrashing free of the blankets. She quickly turned up the wick in the lamp on the table by the door. The better light showed Kenshin, hair wild, eyes huge and staring at her, huddled in a corner. His mouth was open and he was gasping for breath. Tears streaked down his face -- she had seen him cry once in the entire time she'd known him. And that hadn't been like this; there had been sobs, and grief, but not real tears that time.

"Kenshin? Kenshin?"

It took him a very long moment to even recognize her. "K-kaoru."

_Relief_, in the lines of his body. And now there was comprehension, and a return to sanity. He rose and stumbled towards her, desperate need on his face. She caught him in her arms and sank back to the futon with him.

"Koishii, koishii, what is it. What did you dream?"

He just held her, wordlessly, still shaking, face buried in her shoulder. "Kaoru ... Gods, Kaoru, thank you for being here."

"Shhhh." She ran her hands through his loose hair. "It's okay, Kenshin. Who's Shinta? You were crying the name ..."

He went very, very still. "This one was talking?"

"Screaming, actually. You scared me."

Silence. He sighed. "I ..." He trailed off, and his arms tightened around her.

She leaned back, studied his face. He only reluctantly loosened his grip so she could see him. "You were crying about an aunt ...?"

He averted his eyes, and wouldn't look at her for a long moment. "It happened a long time ago, Kaoru, that it did."

"You know your past doesn't matter to me. It never has." _What did he do to this 'auntie' person? Who the hell is Shinta? _She didn't think he was going to tell her any details. It was too like Kenshin to simply not talk about his past. This, she sensed, had to do with something in his history -- perhaps during the Revolution. Had he _killed _this Auntie person?

"I ... hold me, Kaoru. Please." His voice was pleading, almost like that of a small child. "It happened a long, long time ago. I thought it no longer had the power to hurt like this ... Kaoru, I'm sorry for waking you."

"Kenshin, don't be ridiculous. _Sorry for waking me? _I've never, ever seen you like this!"

"Aa." Very softly. "It was a very bad nightmare, that it was."

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

He was so still for so long that she thought the answer was no. But then he heaved a deep, ragged breath, and kissed her gently, and then said, "Give me a minute, beloved. I ... need to collect myself. Can you make some tea?"

Outside, a rooster crowed. It was almost dawn; she could tell because the full moon was nearly setting. "Of course, Kenshin."

"Thank you." His voice was a bare whisper.

She didn't want to leave him, but he loosed his grip on her and withdrew, looking somehow very small and fragile and young. He never looked young to her -- she saw the age and wisdom in his eyes, even if time did not mark his body -- but somehow, right now, he looked like a lost child. The golden gleam was utterly gone from his eyes, replaced by the deepest of amethyst.

She stood up, and squeezed his shoulder, then padded into the kitchen to start a pot of water boiling for tea. This involved stoking the stove first, and waiting for it to heat up -- they'd need the stove hot for breakfast anyway, and fussing over the tea gave _her _time to collect her own thoughts.

_I have never, ever, seen him so upset. He had to have killed this 'Auntie' person and I'm not even sure I want to hear this story. And who's Shinta -- someone else he killed? Damnit, I used to say Kenshin's past doesn't matter to me, but it keeps coming back to haunt him. _

_And what set him off? He was so quiet when he came back from seeing Marshall-sama home. Maybe Marshall told him something about Immortals that really upset him. Because I thought he was terribly upset when he went to bed; he was just too still and he seemed so far away._

When the tea was done, she padded into their room. The door was open, and she found him seated on the steps, hunched up and looking very cold. Autumn was definitely in the air -- in the dawning light, frost glinted.

Wordlessly, she picked the blanket up and carried it and the two cups of tea out to him. He glanced up at her, accepted his cup of tea, and sipped it gingerly. She settled down beside him, draped the blanket around both their shoulders, and leaned against his warmth.

"I'm sorry for frightening you, that I am."

"You had a nightmare, koishii. Don't apologize!"

"Kaoru, love, you save this one from madness at times."

She didn't quite know what to say to that, but he didn't seem to want an actual response. He sighed heavily, stretched his legs out, stared at his socks, sipped his tea again, then cradled the hot cup in his hands. She waited, knowing him well enough to believe that if he'd said he would tell her -- in his own time, when he'd gained enough emotional control not to cry or rage angrily or otherwise lose his composure.

Finally, he reached across her, grabbed the corner of the blanket on her side, and pulled it close, wrapping both of them in the soft folds. Very quietly, he said, "A long time ago, Kaoru, when I was child of about eight years, my parents and all my brothers and sisters died of cholera."

_Oh._ An inkling of realization struck her; his next words confirmed her fears that this nightmare hadn't been about old victims at all. It had been something even worse.

"I had relatives in Himura -- the village. At least, I thought I had relatives, though I never looked like them and I suppose now I must have been a foundling. But my mother and father never told me that, and I never knew until Connor told me that Immortals are found, not born." He shrugged. "I'm not sure if that had any bearing on what happened or not."

His words were too precise, too _Kenshin-like. _This was Kenshin exerting every ounce of control he possessed to keep from screaming. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him, but his bearing right now was absolutely forbidding -- he was deliberately putting up walls between them, and keeping a little emotional space.

He sipped his tea quietly for a minute, and she waited for him to continue.

"I was taken in by my mother's sister -- her name was Suri. Kaoru, my aunt loved me. I _know _that. But she had seven children -- two girls and five boys. The youngest was an infant, the oldest was sixteen. My cousins." He bowed his head for a moment. "Things weren't bad, for awhile. They treated me as one of the family. I thought I would live with them forever."

_Oh no ... he's had so many tragedies in his life. This is another one. And so young ..._

He glanced sideways at her, violet eyes inches from hers. She could feel him draw a deep breath before continuing. "That year, a storm blew in from the ocean, and the house was destroyed and the crops ruined."

_Damnit, Kenshin. Baka! Why haven't you ever said anything about this before?_

He leaned back a little, and regarded the morning sky. There were puffy clouds in it; she thought it might rain later. He said, in that same subdued voice, "We were going to starve, that winter. We were already going hungry -- eating roots and bark and what little game we could hunt. I remember I was always, always hungry, for months. Then my aunt's baby -- my cousin -- died, because my aunt could not make milk for her. She was too thin. There was cholera in the village again, and influenza too.

"And ... there just wasn't enough food. And no money, either, to replace it."

He hunched deeper into the blanket, and moved perhaps a little closer to her. His hip and shoulder were touching hers, warm and solid. He sipped the tea, and studied the clouds, and watched a bird, and said nothing for a long time.

"Men came to the village, Kaoru. You have to understand, my aunt and uncle were _starving_ and watching their own children starve too."

"Oh no." She whispered. _Oh no, oh no, no, no ... Kenshin ... your own kin sold you ... _

"I wasn't supposed to be there, but I snuck away from my grandmother's house and sat beneath my aunt's window and overheard. The men were offering money to 'hire' the village children for various jobs that sounded perfectly legitimate as long as you didn't think too hard about it -- and they really wanted me." He blew out a short, sharp breath, making his long bangs bounce.

He glanced at her. "The men had offered some money money to 'hire' my three older cousins as laborers. They were in their teens. But -- they'd offered a _lot _more money to 'hire' me."

"You were just a little boy," she said, confused. "Why would you be worth more than ..."

Violet eyes met hers. His expression was utterly, terribly bleak. It silenced her. "My aunt argued ferociously to keep me. She said the men would send my cousins to work, and it would be hard work, but they'd come home someday, and they were quite willing to go. They were old enough to work, and farm boys besides, and they understood -- I'd even heard them talking to my aunt about it."

Kenshin sipped his tea, then suddenly dashed the remaining hot liquid out onto the cold ground. It steamed in the dawn air. He set the mug down with a click of ceramic on wood and said shortly, "My uncle wanted to send me. Because he said that it made more sense to send one tiny, useless boy away for a lot of money than it would to send away three big, healthy boys who would be needed on the farm in the spring. He said the amount that all three boys would make would not equal what _I _would bring, and that they would need every penny of the price I would bring if they wanted everyone else to survive to spring. He said he wasn't losing another baby to starvation."

He glanced at her again. "I must have been a very pretty boy. They offered more for _me _-- more than twice -- than all three of my older cousins would have brought combined."

_Pretty boy_. Something went _click _in her head, and she realized _why _a very, very pretty young boy with exotic good looks would have been so desired by men 'hiring' children.

Kenshin picked the mug up, found it empty, and fiddled with it, rolling it back and forth between his hands. "Anyway, my aunt lost the argument and the next day I found myself ..." He swallowed hard, adam's apple bobbing. "The thing was, I believed the men when they said I'd be a servant in a nice house, for a nice family."

"Oh no, Kenshin ..."

"I went willingly. I was so fucking proud, that day." The obscenity shocked her even though it was delivered in the same calm voice, without any particular emphasis. Her rurouni never swore. "I was proud of how much money I'd made for my aunt -- you know me, Kaoru. Picture me at nine years old, proud as shit that I was going to single-handedly earn enough money to save my aunt and uncle and all six of my cousins that were still alive."

His voice cracked when he continued, and bitterness suddenly seared through in his words. "I d-didn't understand why my aunt was c-crying so hard, and why she told me so many times how much she loved me. I didn't understand why my uncle wasn't there to say goodbye to me at all. I didn't get it. I believed them, I believed I'd work for the rich people for a year, and then I could go home to the family that loved me."

"Kenshin ... koishii ..."

He glanced sideways at her. "I found out that night what they really wanted me for."

"Gods ..."

"Shinta was me, Kaoru. Shinta was me. Hiko changed my name when he took me on as an apprentice."

He tried to take a sip of tea from the now-empty mug. She wordlessly offered him her cup, and he downed it in one gulp, even though it hadn't cooled much. "Anyway, Marshall-sama made a pass at me, last night. It wasn't the first time that's happened, but he grabbed me and he wouldn't let go. He tried to force himself on me ... It ... it brought back some old memories, is all. Old nightmares, of _not _being able to fight my way free. Marshall wasn't much of a threat, but it made me remember, that it did. And I'm sorry for scaring you, it really is in the past."

"I'm so sorry. I never even suspected ... Marshall did _what?_"

He shrugged, making the blanket slide off one narrow shoulder. He caught it and pulled it back up. "It's past history, that it is. And Marshall-sama was very drunk and I don't think he'll make the same mistake twice."

_Heh. I'd imagine not. I hope Kenshin kicked his ass into next week._

"Did you ... did you ever go back?" She asked, for lack of anything else to say. "Confront them?"

"After the revolution that was the first place I went, actually. I didn't speak to anyone. I just walked through the town on the main road. I saw a few of my cousins working together in a field, so maybe what happened was worth it -- at least some of them lived, when they almost certainly would have starved, otherwise."

"Don't say that. It wasn't worth it! They could have found another way!" She said that fiercely, tears prickling at her eyes for the brutally betrayed boy he'd once been.

"My baby cousin _did _die of hunger. I'm not sure they had any other choices -- they might have been at the very end of all options for survival. And so they chose to sell Shinta to save all the others, and pray he finds a way to survive ..."

"Kenshin..." She trailed off. She didn't even know what to say. His words were quiet, logical, rational. His screams of, _Don't sell Shinta! _earlier had told a very different story about the sense of absolute betrayal he'd felt.

He stood up, and then offered her a hand up as well. His fingers were still warm from the mugs of hot tea. He gave her a rurouni smile that didn't touch his eyes at all. "Kaoru, love, I should get dressed and start breakfast."

"I can handle it if you're not feeling up to ..."

"I had a nightmare, not the 'flu," he said, with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I'll be fine. Please do not worry about me."

--------------------------


	20. Chapter 20

A Life Lived

------------------------

Author's notes: Hopefully, these are coherent notes. 3 hours of sleep last night ... going to bed soonish here. :-)

I am truly sorry if anyone was upset by the last chapter and thinks it was clichéd or that the abuse was an overused plot device. I am not intending my take on Kenshin's childhood to be gratuitous. There is a reason for the history I'm building here -- I need to set up some back story for _Walk Not Alone_ to work right. For what it's worth, most of this story is going to deal with other things in Kenshin's past.

One other thing -- I've finally got my ducks in a row and I now have some serious work to do on a couple web development projects so you guys will be seeing less fic out of me. Not none -- I'm still writing on lunch, that's MY time for writing -- but less of a volume.

------------------------

"Hey Kenshin." Sanosuke was leaning against the dojo's wall when Kenshin stepped out of the gates on a bright fall morning three days after the nightmare. The tall man was chewing on a piece of straw and looked remarkably lean and fit. He'd been away six months, and Kenshin gave him a look of surprised amusement at his unexpected return and the oh-so-casual greeting.

"Oro! Sanosuke! Thought you were going to be gone a year!"

"Got homesick," Sano drawled.

"Ran out of money?" Kenshin replied, with a knowing laugh.

"That, too," Sanosuke admitted easily.

"How was America?" Kenshin pulled the gate shut and then headed in the direction of town with Sanosuke trailing after, hands in his pockets and a slouch in his stride.

"Big." Sanosuke said. Then he shook his head, "I couldn't find much work -- their economy was in a pretty bad state, so I ended up broke. Nobody'd give a decent job to a quote-unquote _Chinaman_. And the exchange rate for the money I brought with me wasn't very favorable; I think the money changer ripped me off because I didn't speak English when I got off the boat."

"Chinamen?" Kenshin said, puzzled. "And by the way, it is good to see you back, that it is." In truth, he was rather envious of Sanosuke's trips to various corners of the world. Two years ago, it had been Mongolia for Sano. Before that, Africa.

"'Chinaman' -- it's what they kept calling me. It was annoying, I tell you. And they don't _like Chinamen _much at all." Sanosuke's sighed, a bit, and Kenshin thought he heardpain there. He winced; Sanosuke, for all his sometimes devilish enjoyment of a good brawl, rather liked people and was generally liked in return. _On the other hand, I don't imagine we'd be very receptive to a Westerner wandering freely around Japan looking for work either. From what I've heard, America is probably more tolerant than Japan is._

Sano continued, "But America was beautiful. I worked for a bit on a ranch with real cowboys and I traveled all over. It's a wild country, Kenshin, nothing like Japan. You can ride a horse for days and days and you won't see anyone else. I spent two months just wandering all over California and Arizona Territory."

"Sounds like you had fun, that it does. I wish I could have gone with you."

"Mostly, it was fun." Sanosuke agreed. "I sure did get homesick, though."

"Aa, I bet you were missing a certain foxy lady?" Kenshin smiled, "Does she know you're home? You busted your hand up again, I see."

Three fingers on Sano's hand were splinted -- not exactly an unusual state for him. He was remarkably talented at finding fights. However, at Kenshin's mostly joking words, an ... odd ... expression crossed his face. Kenshin frowned at that look and waited for an explanation. Sanosuke said, finally, "Hai! She knows. She was, mm, glad to see me too."

"Oh?" He glanced up at Sano again, puzzled by the way he'd said that. _Hah! And about time, too. _He studied his friend, trying to read Sanosuke's expression for confirmation of his sudden strong suspicions.

Sanosuke was getting -- not old, but _older_, Kenshin noted. There was quite a bit of grey sprinkled through his hair, though that wild mass was as untamable as ever. He had wrinkles around his eyes and years of exposure to the elements had left his skin roughened and well tanned. His eyes were the same light brown tinted by mischief, however, and he would always have that easy smile.

The expression on his face now made him look many years younger. It was pure joy. Kenshin thought, _I bet Megumi's smug as the cat that stole the cream right about now. _

Sanosuke, hands in his pockets, said -- almost crowed, really --,"Kenshin? Would you at all consider loaning me some money?"

"Oro! That's a record!"

"Huh?"

"You haven't been back five minutes and you want a loan, that you do," Kenshin was still teasing -- Sanosuke _had _gotten better about paying off his debts. And Sano's very good humor was infectious.

"You know I'm good for it. I'll get a job -- I've already got a few prospects lined up! And I speak some English now, so I might be able to get a job for a foreigner as a bodyguard or something. That'd pay _well_." Sanosuke sounded defensive, and just a little bit desperate. _He hasn't even realized I know. He's going to ask her for marriage, that he is. _

"Mm. If you need references for that, let me know." Kenshin said, amiably, playing dumb despite his rather confident suspicions. "What do you need the money for?"

"It's about Megumi."

Pretending to be puzzled, Kenshin said, "If Megumi-dono needs money, she knows she can come to us. Kaoru and I would be happy to ..."

"No, no, not that. Megumi's fine. I ... I-want-to-ask-her-to-marry-me." Sanosuke stammered out "And there's stuff I need to buy. You know, for a wedding. If she says yes. Like fancy clothes and things. And I want to get her a western-style ring. I think she'd like a pretty ring."

Kenshin's eyebrows rose and disappeared under the crimson fall of his bangs. "Oro! Sano, that's a bit sudden, don't you think ...?"

_That _got him a dark glare from his friend, because it wasn't sudden at all and Kenshin was very much razzing him -- in fact, Kenshin figured he had just won five yen from Yahiko on a bet they'd waged ten years before. Kenshin, the romantic, had said they would get married; Yahiko had wagered that they would marry others.

Kenshin hid a laugh at Sanosuke's expense by coughing, and said, "Why now?"

Sanosuke cleared his throat. "I stopped in to see her last night."

"And?"

"And she said she was tired about worrying about me every time I went off somewhere crazy, and she was going to give me a reason to stay home." If it was possible for a man to sound both smug and embarrassed at the same time, Sanosuke did. But he also sounded incredibly thrilled.

Now Kenshin _did _laugh, openly, until his sides hurt. He laughed until Sanosuke snapped, "You know, if you die of apoplexy, Kaoru will _kill _me."

"Oro! B-but I can't die, so you're perfectly safe, that you are!" Kenshin finally managed to gain control of his amusement. He couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed so hard. It was Sanosuke's _expression_ that did it, more than anything else -- at almost forty, and with rough good looks and roguish charm, Sanosuke certainly wasn't inexperienced with the ladies, but Megumi was a very different sort of woman from Sano's usual girlfriends.

Sanosuke snorted. "True. Still. It's not _that _funny."

"Sano? I'm truthfully amazed that Megumi didn't do that years ago."

"I didn't think she liked me that much!" Sanosuke laughed. "She said she was waiting for me to grow up and has finally decided I'm never gonna and she wants me anyway! Idiot woman. Didn't think I had to worry about 'growing up' because she didn't like me that much to start with. Would've at least made an attempt if it thought I'd have gotten somewhere with her!"

"Sanosuke, my friend, she'd _have _to like you to put up with you all these years. And yes I'll loan you what you need if she says yes when you ask her. I'd _give _it to you for this. And I'm pretty sure her answer will be a yes when you ask."

"Do you really think so?" Sanosuke said. He paused, and then added with a gleam, "By the way, I am _most _glad you picked Kaoru, Kenshin, and left me the Fox Lady. Megumi is amazing. If you know what I mean."

Kenshin gave him a scandalized look. "Sanosuke Sagara!"

"Yeah," Sanosuke said, walking now with his fingers laced together behind his head. "Oh, yeah. I think I'll be sticking around from now on ... damn, wish she'd jumped my bones years ago if I knew it was going to be like last night ... the lady's got some skills I never expected!"

"Oro!" Kenshin protested. "Sano, Megumi would _kill _you if she heard you say something like that!"

"But it's true!" Sanosuke protested.

Kenshin shook his head -- he didn't know whether to be mortified on Megumi's behalf or simply laugh at Sano's obvious delight in the unexpected change in his relationship with the doctor. Finally, he said, "I am happy for you, Sano. Congratulations."

"Hai! I'm happy for me too." Sanosuke's grin was positively goofy.

"Hentai, that you are!" Kenshin retorted, matching Sano's grin with a rorouni smile.


	21. Chapter 21

A Life Lived

-----------------------

Kenshin shifted the weight of a large bag of rice from one shoulder to the other. He only had a few hundred more feet to go, but after the long walk from the market to the dojo, his scarred back and his often-injured right shoulder were burning with pain. His knees felt weak and his breath came harsh in his chest.

He shouldn't have bought quite so much rice, but the price had been good and he'd convinced himself he could carry the big bag home. He was master of Hiten ... oh, hell. Didn't matter. He was going to die of a heart attack (Immortality or not) before he made it to the storeroom with the rice.

With a grunt, Kenshin started walking again, legs wobbling beneath him. He could do this. He could ... almost there ...

"Hey Father! Need a hand?"

Kenji crossed the yard with leggy, easy strides and grabbed the bag of rice from Kenshin's hands. He casually tossed it over his shoulder, and walked off with it as if it weighed nothing. Kenshin propped his hands on his knees, relief warring with embarrassment as he sucked cool air into his lungs. In the cold winter air, his breath steamed. He was _exhausted_ -- he just wanted to sit down on the ground for about a year until his heart stopped pounding in his chest and his legs quit quaking, but he kept to his feet and retained that much dignity by sheer force of will.

Kenji, at well over six feet of solid muscle, was quite useful -- but still. Still. He was the father, he shouldn't need his son's help with things like this.

"Himura-san! Are you okay?" A female voice asked -- he'd been aware of the other person in the yard, but her ki had been completely non-threatening and he'd been too focused with catching his breath to really pay her any attention before.

Kenshin looked up through a fall of sweaty red bangs. The voice belonged to Marshall's niece.

"Jessica-dono." Wincing a bit as pain seared through the old scars and down one leg, Kenshin straightened up. His back popped audibly. "Good afternoon."

"Are you okay?" she repeated.

He glanced after Kenji. "Oro! I am fine except for being short and skinny and in a great deal of pain."

She laughed, merrily, at his aggrieved tone. She teased, "And old."

"And getting absolutely no respect, that I am not," he sighed, comically. _I like the niece, even if I think her uncle is a bit on the slimy side. _

She sobered, and said seriously, "My uncle said to tell you that he's sorry for what happened. I don't know what he means ..."

"I do," Kenshin said, quietly, letting nothing of his distaste for the man appear on his face for Jessica's benefit. "Just tell him I said I think he needs to drink less."

Jessica sighed, suddenly, and folded her arms, and looked distinctly uncomfortable.By her expression she had at least a suspicion of what had happened. Kenshin didn't like that at all; it implied the man's unpleasant behavior had happened before. But Kenshin forced himself to say gently, "Oro, he was just way too drunk, Jessica-dono. Tell him all is good as long as he doesn't do it again."

_Bastard doesn't even have the honor to issue an apology in person. He sends his niece. Either he's a terrible coward or he underestimates just how offensive I found his behavior. Perhaps both. Or there's a third option -- he is a very high ranking man and I am not. He may feel he simply doesn't owe an honest apology to this one._

"I will." Jessica said, yanking his attention back to her. Her expression cleared a bit, and she glanced towards the returning Kenji. She dimpled, suddenly, as Kenji smiled at her.

Kenshin shot Kenji a questioning look, which Kenji correctly interpreted as a, "_Why is she here?" _inquiry.

"Jessica came by because Megumi sent her here with some liniment that Kaoru had asked for." Kenji said, easily.

"... Megumi-san did what?" _Why would she send Jessica?_

"Oh. You don't know, do you?" The young blond woman blinked, surprised realization crossing her face. "My father was a doctor. I was studying medicine at London University before I came here." A frown crossed her face, and a hint of sadness touched her blue eyes. "... I only had about six months to go before I took my exams."

_Something bad happened_. Instinct told Kenshin that, as well as logic -- if she only had six months to go, why wouldn't she have completed her degree?

"I've been helping at the clinic -- I'm not sure what the patients think of me ..."

_People have enough issues with Megumi; heavens know what they make of a Western woman! _Kenshin thought, with some concern.

"... but Megumi-san says she needs the help. And it's been interesting learning about Eastern medicine."

_It probably goes both ways if I know Megumi, and I'd wager Megumi sees this as an equal trade. _Kenshin thought. _Though if I don't miss my guess, Jessica's got as much kitsune in her soul as Megumi does and it should be entertaining to watch the two of them work together._ It was funny -- he didn't think much of the uncle, but he found himself liking this Jessica Marshall quite a lot.

"And on that note, Himura-san, I must take your leave -- I'm helping Megumi with variola vaccinations this afternoon."

Kenshin almost instinctively itched his arm, where he had several vaccine scars lined up -- though recent vaccinations (required by law every five years) at least hadn't left him with any scars. Then he noticed the look that Kenji was giving Jessica, which was wistful and longing. He impulsively said, "Jessica-dono, why don't you join us for dinner?"

She dimpled again, and said, "I'd be honored, Himura-san. And I think your son might enjoy it too."

Kenji made a strangled noise, having been rendered wordless by Jessica for neither the first nor -- by far -- the last time. Kenshin gave her an utterly innocent smile -- he supposed he should have been shocked by her forwardness, but then again, the love of _his _life had challenged him to a duel the first time they'd met. He said, "I hadn't noticed he was interested in you at all."

She _laughed, _gave Kenji a wave -- Kenji turned a brighter pink than his father's favorite color of clothing -- and made her exit.

_Definitely fox, _Kenshin thought, grinning after she had left. _This woman is a very good match for my gentle son. She's fire to his earth. _

"Father!" Kenji protested, "You're meddling!"

"I am," Kenshin said, cheerfully. "Would you rather she _not _come to dinner?"

"Well, no ..."

"So?"

"You're cooking, right?" Kenji said, with a sudden new worry.

"It is Kaoru's night ..."

"Father! Please! I beg of you! At least have that much pity on me!" Kenji's pleas were exaggerated. The young man's eyes were gleaming with sudden excitement. Kenshin could well imagine the joy that Jessica's teasing had brought to his son's heart.

_He hasn't exactly had a lot of female attention -- at least, not from the girls he likes. There are many parents who would not approve of a union between their daughter and my son, either because of my past or the rumors that I'm really a demon -- _Kenshin was well aware of what some of the more superstitious folk were saying these days -- _or because Kenji will always be gaijiin to some people no matter how long he lives here. We are not exactly the most conventional of families._

"Okay, I'll cook, that I will." Kenshin said, smiling, letting no trace of his thoughts touch his expression. "And Kenji, I do like Jessica-san, that I do."

Kenji smiled. "So do I, Father. So do I ..."


	22. Chapter 22

-1A Life Lived

----------------------

Jessica dabbed perfume behind her ears, then frowned at the tray of jewelry before her on the dresser. Uncle Richard was good to her -- he'd gifted her with a rather nice assortment of earrings and necklaces. She rather suspected that some of the jewelry belonged to his past wives, and she had mixed feelings about that, but she supposed he could have sold the pieces for money rather than giving them to her.

"Wear the rubies," Tabitha suggested, pointing over Jessica's shoulder at a pair of matching ruby studs and a teardrop pendent that was a couple carats in size. "I love those."

Jessica's best friend was running a brush through Jessica's hair before pulling it back into a bun.

"Too expensive. The Himuras are not wealthy people, Tabby," Jessica said, patiently. She picked out a pair of simple gold studs and a matching necklace with a locket -- the locket was empty, but she liked the look of it.

"Did you _really_ tell his father that you thought Kenji'd like you to come to dinner?" Tabby giggled, shaking her head at Jessica's brashness.

"What do you think?" Jessica inserted the earrings, and then studied her appearance critically.

"I think you did. I wish I had half your courage." Tabitha sighed melodramatically.

"Oh, usually about two seconds after I say something like that I'm kicking myself for it. But it _was _fun to see the boy blush. He's just ..." Jessica trailed off, thinking of those blue eyes and that gorgeous red hair. "... I want to know more about him."

"Jessica, a word."

Jessica glanced into the mirror. Her uncle was visible in the doorway behind her, looking remarkably dour.

"Excuse us, please, Tabby," the man said, shortly.

Tabitha nodded, patted Jessica's shoulder in a supportive fashion, and exited in a hurry. Jessica had never understood why Tabby didn't like her uncle.

"I understand you're going to the Kamiya Dojo for dinner," he said, expression forbidding. "Andrew said you asked him to bring the carriage around."

"Uncle? What's wrong?"

"I'm just worried about you." He walked to the window; outside, a few drops of rain were beginning to fall. "Jessica, I'm guessing you're interested in Kenshin's son, correct?"

She shrugged. "He's a nice young man."

"He's beneath you," Marshall said, words very short.

Jessica dimpled. "You've never liked a single one of the men who's come courting me here."

She'd had her fair share of suitors from among the Europeans living here. Most of them, if not all of them, were interested in her because of the fortune she was heiress to, not because of who she was.

"Pah. None of them have had any breeding. You can do better." At least Marshall shared her opinion of the local marriage prospects.

"I like Himura Kenji." _Handsome man. And he hasn't a clue who I am. If he likes me it's for who I am, not how much money I'm worth._

He snorted. "Your father would have an apoplectic fit if he knew you were even considering that boy. You could do so much better when we return home."

"My father's dead. And I'm twenty-five. Let me make my own decisions." She lifted her chin defiantly. "And if you're worried about appearances, his mother is from a good samurai family and his father is held in very high esteem by a number of people who matter in the Meiji government. Mr. Himura is considered a hero by many."

"They're dirt poor. And none of that will matter to anyone in England."

"I don't need to marry for money." She was starting to get annoyed with him.

"I should ..." He huffed a sigh. "How _do _you even know the boy isn't just sniffing around you looking to marry into a wealthy family? It doesn't take much investigation to conclude we're wealthy -- all they have to do is look at the house here."

She laughed at that. It was an absolutely ludicrous suggestion. "Kenji? He can barely put three words together into a coherent sentence when he sees me. He's hardly the type to try to con me, if that's what you're worried about."

"So what are you going to do? Marry him and stay here in this backwards country?" Marshall heaved an aggravated sigh. "Take him home to England with you? He doesn't speak a lick of English. I hardly think he'd fit in with gentle and respectable company back home -- they'd think your husband was a barbarian!"

_That _slowed her down, for a second. She hadn't really thought about things like that. She said slowly, "If -- if it gets to that point, and it's kind of early to think about that, really, then we'd have to make some decisions. Uncle, please, don't stand in my way."

"I will. For your own good." He folded his arms. "I don't want you around them. I don't like Himura and I don't think his son is right for you."

"Oh, so now it's about you not liking another Immortal. Kenshin is a _decent_ man. You've no reason not to like him." She was starting to get seriously angry. "Hell, he doesn't even carry a sword."

"He's going to lose his head if he doesn't adapt to what he is," Marshall said, irritated.

"Maybe. Something tells me he's not defenseless." Jessica shook her head in denial of his statement. She genuinely liked Kenji's courteous, charming father. The thought of some other Immortal cutting his head off just made her sick to her stomach. It would be an act of utter evil. "I'm going, Uncle, unless you're physically going to stop me. And you'll _regret _doing that."

He folded his arms and glared at her.

She grabbed her coat from her bed and said softly, "I love you, Uncle. I do not want to argue with you. But if you stand in my way you _will _have a fight."

"You're headstrong and foolish." He didn't move to actually stop her as she'd essentially dared him to, but he looked absolutely furious.

_Ack. He's probably going to try to exact a price from me for this ... but something tells me Kenji may be worth more than anything that Marshall may do to me in revenge for this defiance. He loves me and he's only worried about me, damnit, and I'm tired of him fussing over me. And he's _wrong _about Kenji being 'beneath me' -- I've my mother's fortune and no need to marry for money or status. I just want someone I _like_ as a husband. _

_Kenji ... Kenji hasn't a clue who I am. If he likes me, it's because he likes me, and I needn't fear it's because he's fallen in love with my wealth, not me. _

"You could have a lord!" He shouted as she made her hasty exit. "A wealthy tycoon! You could do so much better for yourself!"


	23. Chapter 23

A Life Lived

------------------------

"A carriage ..." Kaoru said, eyes widening when she opened the gate. Then she started, and realized she was being very rude, and that Kenji's potential sweetheart was looking at her with some amusement. The carriage was parked on the street behind the woman. "Gomen nasai, Jessica-san, I am Kaoru Kamiya, Kenji's mother. I just wasn't expecting ..."

She looked again at the private carriage, and trailed off, aware there was absolutely nothing she could think to say that wouldn't either be wholly untactful or make her look like a complete bumpkin. It was still there -- a very _nice _carriage, drawn by two matching black geldings and complete with a driver and a footman. She'd never had anyone come to the dojo in a carriage like that except for officials on business. It took quite a bit of money to support the horses, the servants, and the maintenance on the carriage itself.

Jessica grinned, displaying two very deep dimples. "It turns into a pumpkin at midnight, Kaoru-san."

"A pumpkin?" Kaoru blinked, completely baffled by the reference and feeling seriously off balance by the girl's attitude.

"Nevermind." The girl said, cheerfully. "If it were daytime, I would have walked, but I don't want to try to make it home after dark. I'd likely step in a hole and break my leg."

"Or run into robbers," Kaoru said, with understanding. "Please, enter. I am quite happy to meet you."

"It's a pleasure here, too." Jessica said, smiling.

Kaoru studied the woman as she passed by her and into the Kamiya Dojo's courtyard. Jessica was dressed in a very western style -- Kaoru found herself actually envious of the woman's loose skirts and fitted bodice. _It would be easier to run and fight in than a kimono, if it came down to it. And her boots look comfortable too. _

Kaoru found she didn't actually know what to _say _to this woman. She was still trying to figure out how to start a polite conversation when Jesssica said, in a friendly tone of voice, "So, your son says you are a master of the Kamiya style sword discipline."

"Yes." Kaoru blinked.

"I've studied a bit of fencing," Jessica said, "But I had a hard time finding an instructor who would teach a woman. Idiots ... anyway, it's very nice to see a woman do so well for herself."

Kaoru _recognized _that aggrieved tone of voice. She'd grumbled about male attitudes towards women (and regularly thanked the Gods she'd found Kenshin) on a regular basis for most of her life. She grinned. "I've had a few encounters with male idiots myself. Being able to beat them over the head with a shinai is most useful."

Jessica goggled at her, for a moment, eyes gone wide, probably trying to decide if she was serious. Then darkness crossed those clear blue eyes, and Jessica said quietly, "The reason I'm here in Japan is that my dearest friend is wanted for assault on a policeman. She hit him hard enough to knock him out." Jessica sighed. "She was terrified of the charges against her, so we both left the country -- I could hardly let her go alone. My uncle agreed to take us in, and he has some influence, so here we are ..."

"Why ... why did she hit him?" Kaoru asked.

"He was beating a young girl. He'd caught the girl stealing, but it wasn't any reason to beat her so severely. She was hungry and cold and she was only stealing a bucket of coal." Jessica's fists were balled in remembered outrage. "It wasn't right, and when the man wouldn't stop, Tabby picked a board up and hit him with it."

Blue eyes searched Kaoru's face, obviously looking for a reaction. Kaoru snorted, very unladylike, and said, "I'd have hit him too."

"Hell, granny, you have!" That came Yahiko, who let himself in the gate behind Jessica. Kaoru frowned at the 'granny' -- Yahiko had added _granny _to his repertoire of insults the first time he'd spotted a grey hair on her head -- and she had plenty of grey hairs, these days, too. Yahiko always knew exactly what to say to push her buttons. "Though in my case, it was the local yakuza you'n Kenshin beat on for me."

"Yahiko, your manners are incredibly bad." Kaoru frowned at him, annoyed by the way he was acting in front of this upper-class woman. "One would think you were raised by monkeys."

"No, just by a woman who looks like one." Yahiko ducked a swat aimed at his head by Kaoru, with a laugh and a grin. She missed by a mile, but she hadn't been trying very hard.

_Yahiko will be Yahiko -- if this woman is interested in Kenji, I suppose she should see us as we are now. _She sighed and gave up any pretense at being ultra-polite -- this was not something _she _was good at either. "This obnoxious young man is Yahiko Myojin, who I love like a son. I apologize for his ill manners; he _does _know how to be polite when it suits him. Yahiko, this is Miss Jessica Marshall."

"Oh. Kenji's crush." Yahiko said. "She must be nuts. Is she sane? Nobody sane would be interested in Ken-kun. And she'd need a ladder to kiss him."

"Yahiko!" This time, Kaoru's smack was faster, and connected with the back of his head.

"Ow! Kaoru, hey!" It had been awhile since Kaoru had hit him quite that hard. Yahiko rubbed his head and glared at her.

"Gomen nasai, Jessica-san, you must think we are quite rude." Kaoru said, stiffly, after staring Yahiko down. Yahiko shuffled his feet and muttered something that might also have been an apology -- to Jessica, not to Kaoru.

Jessica was hiding a giggle behind one hand, to Kaoru's relief. Kaoru was belatedly realizing she was being almost as bad as Yahiko -- manners? So not her forte either.

Jessica asked, "Yahiko, you're married to Tsubame, right? She mentioned you."

"That's right." Yahiko blinked at her, a bit. He sighed, and suddenly sobered and bowed, changing from a devilish rogue to a polite young samurai in a twinkling. "I apologize for being rude. Kaoru-chan is right; I _do _have better manners. I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Jessica-san."

Jessica smiled, dimples popping up on her cheeks again. "Likewise, Mr. Myojin."

Kaoru led the way into the yard, where they had put out bright lanterns. She explained, "It'll be about half an hour until dinner is ready -- I believe Kenji is in his studio if you'd like talk to him a bit."

"Studio?"

"My son is quite a talented artist." Kaoru said, with pride. "Yahiko, why don't you show her the way?"

----------------------------

_I like his mother_, Jessica thought. The woman was clearly a bit flustered by her -- though some of that had doubtless been because of Yahiko's behavior. _Yahiko's testing me, I think, _Jessica thought, recognizing the behavior from her own brothers' mischief. _Looking out for Kenji, most likely. I bet if I'd gotten offended, he'd have made my life very difficult._

Yahiko was _much _more polite now. With grace and courtesy he led her through the yard and up steps to a medium-sized outbuilding that might have been used for storage once, but was now well lit from inside by multiple lanterns. He opened the door, stuck his head through, and said, "Ohayo, little brother. You've a guest."

Kenji was seated crosslegged on a mat, writing in a journal. He looked up, saw her, and turned a most adorable color of pink. He also snapped the journal shut in a hurry, despite the fact that she didn't read any of the Japanese scripts. Well, she supposed, he didn't know that ...

"Good evening, Kenji-san."

He mumbled something that _might _have been a _good evenjing Jesssica-san, _or maybe not. Or was that a _dono_ like his father used? It had almost sounded like it, but she wasn't sure. He was staring at the ground.

"I think he likes you," Yahiko laughed, and then excused himself.

"Everybody keeps picking on me!" Kenji protested, as he stood up. "Umm. Hello."

"You said that already. I think." She couldn't help but tease him. The truth was, she _liked _him -- it was very clear that he was attracted to her, and it was an honest attraction, with absolutely no hidden agenda. Back home, and even here, most of the men she met were after her money -- some of them might have been genuinely interested in her, but how to tell who was who? They were all so smooth, so cultured, so _fake_.

He mumbled something she didn't have a hope of deciphering.

Well. She'd just need to put him at ease, now that she'd tied him up in knots of embarrassment. She felt a bit guilty for that -- but only a little. "So. Your mother said you were an artist?"

He blinked. Mumbled.

"Sorry, Kenji-san, I didn't quite hear that."

Louder, he repeated, "Hai."

"Can you show me some of your work?" She said, praying he was actually _good_. She hated making false praise.

"... s-sure." He moved, a little too quickly (and probably grateful for something to talk about) to a cabinet where he retrieved several stacks of unframed watercolors. His artwork was of people -- some of them she recognized immediately. They were ordinary scenes of the people around him, doing ordinary things, but the personalities of his subjects shone clearly through. It was as if he'd captured a bit of their soul in the paintings.

The picture on top was of his father asleep in the sun on the dojo's steps, red hair falling across his face, looking very much at peace. There was one of Yahiko and Kaoru sparring -- Yahiko appeared to be about to get thwacked in the ribs with a shinai, and Kenji's mother had a positively joyous grin on her face in anticipation of landing the blow. Another was Megumi's fiancé, slouched against a wall, looking every bit as rough and disreputable as he did in person. _Though he's not, really, anywhere as tough as you'd think from looking at him -- and Kenji's captured the kind look in his eyes and his smile. _

She was surprised to see some of his choice of subjects -- the hard-eyed police captain Saito, a few politicians, a local journalist she'd met once. He seemed to like capturing faces and expressions and body language.

There were others she didn't recognize -- one particularly nicely done painting was of an old man, apparently very tall, dressed in an elaborate cloak and with long white hair streaked through here and there with black. Kenshin was in the picture as well, trotting after the man with a bucket of water in one hand.

"Does the cloak have some significance?" She asked, indicating the man's garb.

"That's Master Hiko," Kenji said, with a fond smile. "He was father's shishou -- his sword master. The cloak's supposed to be ancient, or so he claims, but it looks awfully good to be as old as he says. I think he secretly has a new one made every few years."

"He looks formidable." The man had a dark expression on his face. Kenshin in the picture, by contrast, had a long-suffering look on his features.

"Who, Hiko? Nah. He's hard on my father, but _somebody _needs to be -- Hiko says the things pretty much everyone else is terrified to even hint to Father. And as far as myself -- I've always gotten along with him." Kenji shrugged easily. Jessica noted with satisfaction that, now that he had an actual topic to discuss, Kenji had relaxed considerably.

He explained, motioning at Hiko's image, "I spent a two years up on his mountain when I was thirteen and fourteen. My father wanted Hiko to teach me discipline -- I'd gotten in a few fights that my father didn't approve of. Stupid kid stuff, mostly -- I let a few people get under my skin who shouldn't have. I look funny and with the Battousai as my father, I guess it was inevitable that I'd be a target for the local bullies. Father wasn't happy with the way I handled a few things."

"Hiko ..." mirth lit Kenji's eyes for reasons that she didn't entirely understand, "Hiko called Father his 'stupid apprentice' and a few other rude names when he showed up with me in tow. And then, after Father left, Hiko and I spent exactly one week on sword techniques."

Kenji chuckled. "Hiko then declared me acceptably good with a sword, but told me I'd never be brilliant and that it would be a waste of his time to take me on as an apprentice. He says I'll never be fast enough, that I'm just not built right for swordfighting. So for the next two years he taught me pottery instead. Art? I'm _good _at."

From any other man, she'd have expected embarrassment to accompany a confession that he'd been rejected by his father's swordmaster. She glanced sideways at Kenji, trying to read him. Kenji caught her look, shrugged a bit, and said, "Anyway, when I came back from Hiko's mountain I was a _lot _taller. I didn't have much trouble with bullies after that, and everything worked out in the end."

This was said matter-of-factly but she thought she caught a glimpse of old pain in his blue eyes.

Kenji smiled and shuffled through the stack of paintings to find another one of the tall grey-haired man. In this one, he had a much softer look in his eyes, and a fond smile on his face. "He can be like this, too, if he approves of you -- I think Master Hiko was pleased to teach pottery and not fighting to the Hitokiri Battousai's son."

---------------------

Kaoru wasn't very surprised to hear laughter when she went to tell her son and Jessica that dinner was ready. She pushed the door open to find that Kenji and Jessica were both seated on the floor. Kenji, grinning broadly, eyes sparkling, was telling a story. Jessica was laughing so hard that she was holding her ribs.

"Ken-kun," Kaoru said, "Jessica-san, are you ready to eat?"

Matching grins greeted this announcement. Kaoru didn't quite hear their responses, though she registered that they were an affirmative.

_I will eat my shinai_, Kaoru thought, with both joy and no small amount of sorrow -- sorrow, because she knew this wasn't going to be easy for many reasons, and joy for her son's obvious happiness. _If these two do not end up at least good friends, and quite probably more than that. The look in their eyes ... I've never seen my son look at anyone like that. And Jessica's expression is a mirror of his. _

Still -- it was a troubled Kaoru who followed her son into the house. Troubled, because although she was quite pleased to see her son so happy, she had an ill sense of foreboding that she couldn't fully explain or shake about the matter.


	24. Chapter 24

A Life Lived

Chapter 24

-------------------------

Kenshin felt a buzz of another Immortal and looked up from his laundry. Behind him, a class of smaller children was in full swing -- he could hear his son's directions and the kids counting their way through basic kata steps.

Kenji would never be brilliant with a sword -- but he was competent, and he understood the mechanics quite well, even if he didn't have the speed or agility needed to master any discipline. And he was utterly patient with the little ones. Some parents were initially wary of a gajiin, particularly one so _large_, teaching the class but Kenji had a remarkable ability to charm, given a chance. And the children loved him.

The Immortal was approaching the gate. Kenshin wrung out the sheet he was washing and stood up, heading for the rack to hang it to dry. _It's probably Marshall. It would be appropriate for him to pay a visit given how much time his niece and Kenji are spending together._

In the two months since Kenji and Jessica had met, they'd quickly become friends -- seemingly, attached at the hip most of the time. She often showed up in the afternoon -- as soon as Kenji's classes were over -- and didn't leave until after dinner. Kenji laughed often in her presence -- his initial painful shyness had been replaced by enthusiastic friendship with the foreign woman. Jessica's sly sense of humor had quickly endeared her to all the Kenshin-gumi. She fit in to the fabric of their lives like a piece of a puzzle that they didn't know they'd been missing.

Kenshin was pleased; he truly liked Jessica and had decided he'd simply grit his teeth and endure her slimy uncle's presence whenever required. Which, so far, hadn't happened -- Marshall hadn't so much as stopped by for a chat. Kenshin was irked by that; had he been in the man's shoes, he certainly would be checking up on the people Jessica was spending so much time with.

It was Saito who appeared at the gate, however, and Kenshin had a brief very bad moment as he contemplated _that _possibility. The former Shinsengumi wasn't exactly an enemy these days, but ...

A woman in a kimono appeared behind him. No -- a _girl _in a kimono. Kenshin blinked, realizing that the Immortal ki was coming from her. The two approached, then Saito said something and the girl hung back, very proper, and let Saito walk out of earshot.

"Saito, she's like me," Kenshin said, without preamble.

"Hai." Saito agreed. "I thought so."

Saito had never doubted Kenshin's explanation for what he was -- he'd once said, _I've seen my own proof, Himura_, in a most chilling tone that made Kenshin very suspicious. _What _he was suspicious about, he wasn't sure; Saito wasn't the story-telling type and he had no clue when or where Saito had encountered other evidence about Immortals.

"She's young, that she is," Kenshin said.

"She's fourteen." Saito agreed, "A tiny thing, isn't she? Her family's dead, Himura. Bandits, on the road here. She died too -- she woke on the funeral pyre. That's how _I _got involved -- there was general panic at the thought of a demon and the police were called to bring about order, and I heard. Found her hiding, figured you might know what to do with her."

Kenshin sighed, feeling suddenly very weary. "What's her background?"

"Good family. Gently raised. Various and assorted ties to various and assorted lords and ladies, none of whom will want anything to do with her now. She's meek as hell; she hasn't spoken up once."

There was a headache slowly building behind Kenshin's eyes. He'd already decided he would help. Of course. How could he not? But a 'good girl from a good family' coupled with her body language told him teaching this girl what she needed to know was going to be difficult. He asked, with some degree of annoyance, "Got any _good _news for me?"

Saito sucked deeply on his cigarette, exhaled, and said thoughtfully, "She might be able to cook."

Kenshin gave Saito the dirty look that comment deserved, then nodded shortly. "She can stay here."

"You'll train her?"

Kenshin glanced at the girl. She was _tiny_ -- the top of her head was nose level to Kenshin. She had the figure of a boy, too. _That might be to her advantage. I wonder if we can convince her to dress as a male? She'll get absolutely no respect as a young girl, and she's stuck in that body now for the rest of her very long life. At least as a boy she won't have to deal with _quite _as much crap._ "Maybe."

"Her name's Chiyoko."

Kenshin grunted. "You're kidding me, that you are ..."

"Heh, no." Saito turned and summoned the girl with a wave. Eyes downcast, she approached.

She looked extremely scared, Kenshin thought. "Chiyoko-dono," he said, quietly, "I'm Kenshin Himura. You'll be staying here for awhile -- for as long as you need. We'll keep you safe."

She bowed deeply without looking up and murmured, "Thank you."

_And, child, you're in for the rude shock of your life, on top of all your other shocks, when I explain what 'keeping you safe' is going to fully entail. _

The girl had her hands tucked in the sleeve of her kimono and she was actually, literally, shaking. Fear was evident in every line of her thin body. She was absolutely terrified -- and probably horribly grieving -- and she was about to find out that things were worse than she thought.

_I'll pair her with -- Kenji or Kaoru. _He contemplated his options. _Kaoru will have no patience with this little one. Kaoru doesn't have much patience with helpless silly little women and I daresay that's all you've ever been allowed to be. Kenji, then. He's got the patience of the earth itself when dealing with children._

Learning to wield a sword, however, could wait. Kenshin said quietly, "Look at me, Chiyoko-dono."

Brown eyes met his.

"That's better. You're _safe _here. I promise you, that I do."

A blink. She said in a very small voice, "They're all dead. Everyone. Me, too. Then I woke."

"I know, little one." Kenshin said. "But I think they'd be glad to know you've found a safe place, and people who will look out for you."

She stared at the ground and said nothing.

_This_, Kenshin thought, _Is going to be interesting, that it is. _


	25. Chapter 25

-1A Life Lived

---------------------

Jessica sat on the bench watching as Kenji guided the little Immortal girl through a new move with the sword. She hid a smile behind her hand, watching Kenji -- he was so frustrated with the kid, and so very, very patient. .

Chiyoko was a timid thing; by nature and nurture both, she was just not aggressive enough for what she needed to do, and Kenji had confided in Jessica that he was scared the girl would _never _be able to fight at the level she needed to. Her tiny size would be a handicap that they could compensate for, to some extent. Lack of fighting spirit? That was harder.

Jessica agreed -- the girl just had no _backbone_. Jessica had been witness to the argument between her and Kaoru over wearing a gi and hakama in practice. Chiyoko had _not _been happy about wearing "boy's clothing" much less learning to fight like a man, but she had caved far too quickly when faced with Kaoru's insistence. Instead of arguing, she'd simply cried silently as she dressed in the "boy's clothing" and all through her first several lessons.

Kimonos weren't exactly designed for fighting -- at least, not the type of lightning fast and acrobatic work that Kenji was (trying) to teach her. Chiyoko was wearing a gi and hakama now -- and it actually made her look older; you could see she had a womanly figure. Not much of a chest, but she had a waist and hips that said _girl_. Kenshin had early on speculated that they might be able to pass her off as a boy, but Jessica really didn't think it was possible. She didn't look like a boy in silhouette at all.

"Lower your hands a bit ... there." Kenji instructed.

Silently, the girl did as she was told. She also lowered her eyes. Kenji cleared his throat, catching her attention, then swung slowly at her. She blocked the strike. One-two-three, they worked through the pattern he'd been teaching her.

"Faster now."

Chiyoko's eyes were scared, but she sped up the tempo. Even Jessica could tell the girl was frozen in place, though. She was forgetting her footwork, not moving to pursue Kenji when he backed away a bit, until he stepped so far back that she _had _to take a stride to reach him. He was moving away deliberately, too -- he was trying to cure her of the tendency to stay rooted in one place.

"Okay, full speed. Try and break through and hit me ..." He said, though Chiyoko's 'full speed' was very slow -- she quite simply lacked aggression.

It didn't work, of course -- Chiyoko's eyes grew wider and wider and she slapped at Kenji's sword rather than trying to get past it and hit _him_.

"Chiyoko-chan," Kenji said, "Stop."

She stopped immediately. And she stood very still, eyes downcast.

"This isn't working."

"I can't do this," Chiyoko whispered. "Kenji-sensei, I can't _do _this."

Kenji glanced over at Jessica. _Oh-oh_, Jessica thought, seeing a speculative look cross his face. "Jessica-san, would you do me the honor of joining me for a bit of a demonstration for Chiyoko-chan?"

"Okay," she said, carefully, "But I don't know anything about your style."

"You've been watching me teach for months," he said, "Chiyoko-chan, give her your shinai and sit down and watch."

Chiyoko knelt out of the way and did as she was told. With a sigh, and convinced she was going to look like an idiot, Jessica padded out across the floor to meet Kenji.

She took up what she thought was an approximation of the right stance. It _felt _right, but ...

"Move your foot back a bit. Bend your knee a little. There, that's right." He instructed. "Now, here's what I want you to do ..."

He guided her through several moves. She was surprised at how natural it felt when he showed her how to block several different blows.

"Okay, go through the steps faster now ..."

There was a rhythm to it, and a balance. She saw a look of -- surprise? pleasure? -- on Kenji's face when she picked up the tempo.

Pretty quickly, they were going at it full-speed. It was a pattern of three strikes he was teaching -- easy stuff. Kenji said too low for Chiyoko to hear, "Jessica, you've got potential. You said you'd had some training?"

"Not like this," she murmured back. Then, with a grin, she said, too low for anyone else to hear, "You know, you're terribly sexy with that big sword of yours ..."

He gave her a wide-eyed look and lost the tempo. She nailed him on the shoulder with the flat of her shinai.

"JESSICA-chan!" _Now _he was coming after her, well aware that she'd _deliberately _thrown him off stride. She didn't have a prayer of actually defending herself against Kenji when he was _trying _to get her. She ducked quickly back from a blow that would have stung a bit if it had connected. This threw her off balance and he neatly hooked her ankle with his foot and put her down on the ground.

Laughing, she sprawled out on floor, on her back, grinning up at him. "Got me where you want me now?"

He flopped down next to her, laughing. "You are going to be the death of me. I'm going to die of embarrassment."

He turned his attention to Chiyoko, though, and said mildly, "See? It's okay to try to hit me. Jessica can."

"Hitting Kenji-san's fun," Jessica said, still not getting up.

Chiyoko had one hand over her mouth, hiding a giggle. She stood up, looking a little more relaxed, and Kenji rolled easily to his feet, scooped up the shinai, and tossed it to her. "Couple more rounds and then we can call it a day, Chiyoko-chan."

----------------------

After Kenji declared Chiyoko's lessons done for the day, he sent the girl to her room to change, and then said mildly to Jessica, "You know, you have real talent."

She shrugged. "I've never had anyone willing to teach me much. It's not 'ladylike' ..."

"I'd love to see someone say that to my mother." Kenji snorted his opinion of that statement. "Or to my father, for that matter. You could be very good with a sword, if you wished to learn."

Kenji added, before she could say anything in response to that, "Swordsmanship -- the type we teach here -- is as much about discipline and mental strength as it is about being able to beat up bad guys." He shrugged. "It's a good way to keep fit, too."

"I'd certainly be willing to learn, if you'd teach me." _Heaven forbid I say no to something that'd give me more time with Kenji._

He flashed her a shy grin. "I was hoping you'd say yes. Chiyoko could use someone like you as a role model. She's so ..." he shrugged, helplessly. "Such a timid _girl_."

"You say girl like it's an insult." Jessica said. "I'll have you know _I _am a girl."

He snorted a laugh. "You are a _woman. _There's a difference."

"Thank you, I think."

----------------------


	26. Chapter 26

---------------------

Kaoru was standing in the doorway of the dojo when Kenshin slipped up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and nuzzled her neck. She squawked in surprise and jumped; his gentle chuckle of amusement at the noise she made was very close to her ear.

"Koishii," he murmured, "You look beautiful this morning."

She sighed and leaned back into his arms, enjoying the embrace. Nothing more could come of it than a moment's pleasant intimacy -- the kids would be showing up for lessons very shortly. But there would be time enough for more, later. And for now, she just relaxed into his arms, feeling safe and secure and very loved.

"Are you going to go into town today?" She asked, quietly. If he was hugging her like this, it likely meant he planned on being away for part of the day.

"Mmm. Yes. I need to talk to Marshall."

"Do you want me to come?" She said, with some concern. "Or take Sano?"

Kenshin shook his head. "I can deal with Marshall, Kaoru. Do not worry about me."

She twisted around in his arms so that she was facing him and snuggled into his embrace. He was warm and solid and always there -- she did love him so very much, and sometimes, she still marveled that he loved her back with the same intensity that she had for him.

"You're going to talk to him about Kenji and Jessica, aren't you?" Kaoru said.

Kenshin nodded slowly. "I am ... concerned."

"Yes, I know." She was too. Her son's obvious affection for Jessica was matched by her delight in him; the two complimented each other nicely. But there were practical concerns.

"They are a good match; that has been obvious since the very beginning, and after six months, I am only more convinced of that fact. I am concerned about their future, however. I do not think it would be wise for Jessica to live her life here, in Japan. She will forever be an outsider -- I suspect she would be no more welcomed by the Europeans in this city than she would be by our own people, no matter how fluent she becomes in Japanese, were she to marry our son.

"But England ..." It was so very far away. Kaoru's stomach clenched in an unhappy not at the thought of her son moving away, even to be with one he so obviously loved.

"I do not know if that is a better option than her staying here. I wish to talk to Marshall about that. I know little of England's ways and beliefs. Jessica is not an impartial source of information." Kenshin sighed, sounding very tired. "I'll be back by noon, that I will."

------------------------

Kenshin, hands tucked into his sleeves, walked towards the wealthy enclave where Marshall's western-style house was. It was a long walk and the shortest route took him through the market -- his stomach growled as he walked past a stand selling grilled meat skewers.

_We are not so poor anymore that we have to count every penny_, he thought, happily. It felt good that the dojo was making enough money to not only avoid the edge of starvation, but to be able to afford little luxuries. With only a moment's hesitation, and spurred by the mouth-watering scent of roasting meat, he joined the line of people queued up at the stand. He knew most of them -- and most knew him. The looks he got were uncomfortable, edgy. A space formed around him, as if he had a contagious disease -- neither the woman in front of him nor the man behind him in line were willing to stand too close, and people leaving with their food cut him a wide berth. The tensions here were starting to get blatant. He was aware of the rumors about the cause of his appearance; Sano and Yahiko, and occasionally Saito, kept him informed. They were getting to be ugly.

_They're starting to really notice that I am not aging, _he thought to himself. _Coupled with the tales about my past, I do not blame them for fearing me. _

He put on his best rorouni smile and said cheerfully to the woman immediately in front of him, when she glanced back, "Isn't it an absolutely lovely day?"

"Splendid, Himura-san," she grunted, not looking at him. She sounded frightened of him, and took a step farther away.

He decided trying to strike up a conversation with her would only terrify her, and squared his shoulders, summoned his dignity, and tried to look like he wasn't aware of anything unusual in their reactions to him. Truthfully, he just felt tired. People had been frightened of him all his life. It made the people who loved and trusted him all the more precious.

_Reminds me, _he thought, _I should stop by the clinic on my way home. I would like to see how Sanosuke and Megumi are doing. It's been days since I talked to either of them._

Kenshin glanced up the road, in the direction of the clinic. He could put off the visit with Marshall by going to the clinic first ... there wasn't any real urgency in talking Marshall, and a morning spent bantering with Sanosuke and Megumi, and perhaps a lunch at the Akabeko after helping with the usual round of chores at the clinic, sounded tempting. But ... no. He _did _need to speak to Marshall.

The market in the direction he glanced in was full of people -- it was a busy fall day, with the fall harvest in and farmers selling fresh produce in many stalls. People swarmed in throngs ... and in amongst them, a small boy was playing in the street. Kenshin frowned in concern as he watched the child. He was perhaps two or three years old. In a minute, his mother was going to spot him and pick him up and scold him for wandering off, Kenshin thought.

He heard the horses before he saw them. From the other direction, a carriage was coming fast -- he spun around, saw the driver was leaning back, pulling ferociously against the reins. The horses weren't stopping -- wild eyed and lathered, it appeared they'd been running for awhile and they were _not stopping and the kid was in the way and ... _

Thought ceased. Kenshin simply summoned his god-like speed, dashed into the street, grabbed the kid, and let his momentum carry him out of the way. He lost his footing in the slick mud and tumbled head over heels, tucking his head and arms and legs around the boy to avoid landing on him. The wheels of the carriage were so close to them that he felt the wind of their passing.

Silence, then a gabble of voices from market goers who'd witnessed his actions. The boy started to cry.

Kenshin sat up, "Shh, little one. You're okay, you're not hurt, that you aren't," he assured the child, inspecting him carefully. No damage appeared to be done to the child except for plenty of filth -- Kenshin had landed in a puddle. He himself was soaked through now, red hair dripping with foul water, manure-smelling slime covering his hands and face. It was cold and miserable and with an annoyed sigh, he realized that he'd need to go home and change before he could see Marshall. Fine impression he'd make if he showed up with mud that smelled like a pig wallow.

He wiped the muck from his eyes with the back of one hand and stood up, child in his arms. The people were staring and he asked, "Does anyone know where this boy's mother is?"

"Yukio!" A woman shouted. That would be the mother, Kenshin deduced -- or maybe grandmother. The peasant woman hurrying through the crowds was older, perhaps in her seventies. "Yukio!"

"He's fine, that he is," Kenshin said, when she grabbed the boy from his arms and held him fiercely tight. She coughed, and appeared to be breathing harder than the run deserved. She was not well, Kenshin thought.

"Hey Baba!" The roasted-meat vendor shouted, "Best you keep a better eye on your kid! Himura-san just saved him from being run down by a carriage!"

Kenshin said mildly, "I was close enough to act. Anyone would have done the same. It was nothing."

The woman said something to the boy that Kenshin didn't catch -- it was low and sounded threatening. The kid buried his muddy face in the woman's top. Kenshin figured the kid was in for a well-deserved tongue-lashing later, and the child probably knew it. Having most likely promised to 'deal with him later' or a similar threat, she said, "Thank you, Himura-san. He's my late son's child -- his youngest child. I just looked away for a second ..."

Kenshin smiled, though his insides were still fluttering over the near miss. He forced himself to respond calmly, "I understand. They are fast when they are little, are they not? It just takes an instant ... my own son used to _climb _things."

"You use the surname Himura?" She was studying him curiously. "Your hair, it is most unusual."

The look on her face was decidedly odd. She shifted the child to her hip and peered at him. Slowly, almost warily, she asked, "You wouldn't have a father named Shinta, would you boy?"

"Umm." Kenshin blinked at her. Very carefully, he asked, "What is your name, grandmother?"

"Suri. Suri, from the village Himura."

Kenshin closed his eyes, feeling suddenly light headed and dizzy. He debated simply denying everything and walking away. It had been so long ... so very long. He didn't need nor want to know this woman. Then he looked at her again -- really looked -- and saw poverty in her dress. She wore clothing that was threadbare and worn, and far too light for the season. She had on only sandals, not boots, though summer was well past. She was too thin, and had no teeth left. The kid didn't have warm enough clothing either -- he was shivering, and his grandmother wrapped her arms around him, trying to lend him warmth., despite the vile sloppy mud he was drenched in.

The boy coughed, and Kenshin realized the child had a cold to match his grandmother's. It was a nasty wet sound from deep in the kid's lungs.

Quietly, he said, "I'm much older than I look. I had an aunt named Suri. In the village of Himura. A long time ago. She sold me to slavers so that my cousins might live."

Silence, from woman. She coughed again, spots of color appearing on her cheek. "You don't look a day over twenty."

"I'll be fifty next year." Kenshin wondered if she'd believe him. If she didn't, he decided he wouldn't try to hard to convince her. Either she would or she wouldn't -- it wasn't any concern of his if she chose to walk away.

They stared at each other, until the woman coughed again. She was far, far too pale, Kenshin thought. "You're not well," he found himself saying, quietly. "Do you have a place to stay?"

And then he wondered at the impulse ... well, it wasn't his nature to be vindictive and he understood why she had done what she did. The dojo was doing well; they could afford to put up his poor country relations for the night.

She shook her head. "I just got here, with my son's children. My husband died last summer and we owed so much to the money-lendors ... they took our house ... we've had lousy luck for years, a curse, some say." She peered at him, and asked quietly, "Are you really Shinta?"

"Aa. Believe it, I am." He said, softly, unsure of what else to say. Finally, he offered, "Come, Auntie Suri, you can stay with my wife and I tonight. Where is the rest of your family?"

Her eyes widened. "You would ... would take us in? After we ..."

He sighed. Bowed his head. Swallowed back old pain -- even then, he'd known why, but his heart had never accepted it. Even now, it hurt. Looking at her was a reminder of that pain. "I understand why you did it. And it would be dishonorable of me to leave family with no roof over their head when we have plenty of room -- your little one there is not at fault for what happened in the past. Come, it will be okay, that it will." He put a gentle hand on her shoulder and steered her back towards the dojo.

She coughed again, and shivered a bit, and he could feel heat radiating through the sleeve of her thin top. She was ill -- more ill than he'd realized at first.

They walked in silence back to where the rest of the family was -- they were waiting by the side of the road, four children under the age of ten, all clustered together, plus the toddler in her arms. The children stared at him.

"Shinta ..." Suri touched his arm. "You must know how very sorry I am."

"I've always known." He regarded her levelly. "You set in motion a great many things when you ... sold me, Auntie Suri. The end result is that I am married to a wonderful woman, and with very good friends. It was not an easy road I walked, but I am here, and I have found some degree of contentment. Come, though, it we hurry we can be home in time for lunch and I think your grandchildren," _my cousins_, "are probably hungry, that they are."

A grateful smile marked his words. _Marshall can wait_, Kenshin decided. _They're all sick -- every last one of them has a terrible cold. _All of the kids were coughing and sniffling. The weather was cold, and had been damp; he assumed they'd been traveling in the rain and bad weather for at least a few weeks. It was a long way to Himura on foot.

_I hope they can find work here, _he thought. _I'm not sure I want them staying with me ... _Then he felt bad for the thought. _We have far more than they do, and they are family. Kaoru will not complain -- she'll feel the same way I do. They are ill, and I could not in good conscience let the children stay out in the cold. _

He added, after a moment of walking beside them back to the dojo, "You should know that my name is Kenshin, now. I haven't been Shinta since I was eight."

Suri's eyes widened with recognition of the name. She gave his face a hard look, and frowned, and said, "There are stories told of a red-haired man named Kenshin Himura with a scar like yours. I always wondered about that."

"Aa," Kenshin said, meeting her gaze. "Some of them are true, some are not."

"_You _are the Battousai?" Suri demanded, eyes widening. "You? Little Shinta? You were a gentle child! I cannot conceive of this!"

"They called me that, a long time ago." Kenshin regarded her uneasily. She was looking at him like she was truly afraid now. Would she call him a demon next, as many of his neighbors had started doing? He wasn't sure he was entirely happy with this reunion anyway; he'd thought any remnants of his family in Himura were best left in the past. There were bad memories there, and shattering heartbreak. "I left that name behind many years ago as well. I am simply Kenshin Himura."

"Well, you've done well for yourself," Suri said. She obviously intended it as a compliment, but Kenshin winced anyway.

-------------------

Kaoru hadn't expected Kenshin back before lunch, so when he appeared only a few hours after leaving she was surprised. There was an elderly woman with him, and five children -- a toddler, and two boys, and two girls. The eldest girl was about ten, and the rest of the kids were all younger. Kenshin was soaked head to toe in mud -- when he drew closer, she smelled it, and realized it was _vile_ mud. He had his hands out to either side, obviously trying not to touch himself or anything or anyone else. His hair was full of it, too, and he'd put his ponytail up in a clumsy bun, obviously not liking the mud-soaked hair rubbing against his back.

She almost giggled. He looked so miserable -- her rorouni was something of a peacock most of the time, but right now, he looked like the most miserable beggar.

Then she saw Kenshin's face. He was so upset over something that he wasn't even trying for his goofy rorouni smile. His mouth was set in a grim line and his eyes troubled. _Problems_, she thought -- Kenshin was clearly disturbed by something, and badly.

"Kaoru, koishii ..." he embraced her, something he rarely did in front of anyone else. _Not danger-trouble, _Kaoru realized, but rather something had happened that had upset him emotionally. He was reaching for her support, literally as well as figuratively.

"What is it?" She murmured back.

He pulled away, though he stood very close to her. The old woman was glancing quickly from her to him and back. _Yeah, look_, Kaoru thought, irritably. _I'm going grey and he's still as handsome as the day he married me. Just don't giggle and make snide comments anywhere that I can hear you or I might hit you with my shinai._

"Kaoru," Kenshin's voice was low, almost subdued -- it was a tone she rarely heard out of him. "Remember when I told you about Himura?"

It took her a second to realize he was talking about his village, and not his surname. "Um, yeah."

"This is Suri Himura. My aunt -- and her grandchildren." Kenshin said, carefully. "I said they could stay here for awhile. They've nowhere to stay and no money."

He was looking at her earnestly now, obviously hoping his invitation would be okay -- of course, it was; who could turn children out into the street? And they were Kenshin's _family_. It was a strange concept, to think of her wanderer as having kin. Even though she'd learned recently that he might have living relatives (albeit relations complicated by the likely fact that, as an Immortal, he was a foundling) she still thought of him as an orphan like herself.

"Welcome. I'm Kaoru, Kenshin's wife. Come inside, out of the cold."

One of the kids sneezed. Vile cold, it sounded like. They all looked sick -- the elderly woman had started shivering like she had a fever.

Kaoru heard the shoji on the house slide open behind her. She glanced back -- it was Kenji, coming to check out the visitors. The youngest boy, the toddler, saw him and started crying in fear and clung to his grandmother's leg. Kaoru covered a sudden grin behind her hand; Kenji, at well over six feet tall, and built like a living mountain, sometimes had that effect on unsuspecting children. Usually, the fear lasted a few minutes and was quickly replaced by mutual affection -- Kenji shared his father's love of children and it didn't take long for them to realize that.

"Gomen nasai, little one," Kenji said, smiling at the boy. The other kids didn't look much happier; they were clustering together behind their grandmother and staring up at him in obvious fear. Kaoru realized that they may have never seen a western face before, much less anyone of Kenji's stature -- he probably looked like a demon to them. Kenji said, quietly, "Ah, am I that scary?"

The younger of the two little girls _nodded _silently. The other kids just continued to stare at him,

The women clustered together, staring up at him. Kenshin said, "Ken-kun, this is Suri Himura -- Suri is my aunt, and the little ones are my cousins."

Kenji's mouth dropped open for a moment. He turned and said, "Father ...?" in a tone of pure astonishment.

Kenshin reached up and rested a hand on his son's arm. Kenji was shooting him a suspicious look; it clearly said, _Why haven't you mentioned family before? _Which Kenshin met with a slight shake of his head. Kaoru suspected he would explain things to Kenji later, at least with as much information as he thought his son should have, and that he could bear for him to know. "Auntie Suri, this is my son, Kenji."

She glanced from Kenji to Kenshin to Kaoru and back. Frowned. Kaoru wasn't sure what the frown meant -- she hoped it wasn't disapproval of their western-born child, but she suspected it was. "Adopted?"

"Hai." Kenshin said, firmly.

"Do you have other children?" Suri asked.

"We've raised Kenji and another boy, Yahiko, who's grown now, with children of his own. And we've recently taken the care on of a girl, Chiyoko, whose parents were killed by bandits." Kaoru put in, "But come inside, where it's warm. I can tell you are not feeling well."

"Thank you," she murmured.

Inside, Suri stared around at the interior of the house with obvious appreciation. She said to Kenshin, "You've done quite well for yourself, my boy. I'd always hoped you would ... you had so much promise, even as a boy."

Kenshin closed his eyes for a moment, and then said, "The dojo was Kaoru's father. She inherited it, and she runs the school. Kenji and Yahiko -- who you'll meet when his class is done in a few minutes -- teach with her."

Suri said in surprise, "You do not teach?"

"Not swordplay, no." Kenshin said, "The Kamiya Kasshin style is what this dojo is known for, not mine."

"This is, truthfully, a modest house," Kaoru murmured, uncomfortable with the looks of awe coming from Keiko and Suri. "It is nothing special."

Silence, from the women. Clearly, they disagreed. Kauro shifted uneasily, realizing just how poor they were.

Unexpectedly, Kenji spoke up, "I assume the women and the little one will be staying in the guest room and the girls in Chiyoko's room with her. Perhaps the boys can stay in my room with me?"

"Thank you, Kenji, that will work."

Kenji grinned. The two older boys were clinging to each other, staring up at him. Kenji sobered and said, "Or perhaps I should stay in my studio. I think they're scared of me, Father."

"Not scared of nothing!" One of the boys announced, squaring his shoulders. "I could kick your butt!"

Kaoru bit back a laugh. Kenji was working his magic. The boys were seven or eight for the youngest and about nine for the elder. It was the elder boy who was now glaring up at Kenji with a hand on his younger brother's shoulders.

"I bet you could," Kenji took a mock-nervous step back. "Maybe I'd be safest if I slept in the studio. You two might hurt me while I sleep."

Kaoru gave Kenji half a day, at most, before he had the boys following him around like puppies.

"Auntie Suri, perhaps you and the children would like hot baths?" Kenshin suggested.

She looked him up and down, then glanced at the muck-covered toddler in her arms. "I'll clean this one up, then I think you need a bath more than me, Kenshin-san."

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "Yes, that this one does."

------------------------


	27. Chapter 27

Chapter 27

-----------------------

"He's a good man," the old woman said, watching Kenshin draw several buckets of water from the well. The eldest boy -- Aki -- was running the buckets into the bath house, filling the tub.

Kaoru glanced at Kenshin's aunt. Knowing what she did of their history, she just couldn't bring herself to like the woman. _Civil _was the best she could manage, and that was a strain. She bit back her instinctive response, _No thanks to you_, and simply said, "He is. I'm lucky."

"He doesn't age." Suri shook her head slowly. Her voice was hoarse with an absolutely horrible cold. "The boy's been unnatural since my sister's husband found him."

This wasn't an unexpected revelation; Kaoru knew Immortals were found, not born. Marshall had told them that much. She simply said, "How did she find him?"

"Some hunters found him, left alone in the woods. We always assumed he'd been abandoned because of his hair and his eyes. He was maybe two years old." Suri shrugged, dismissively. "My sister had more kindness than common sense; she took him in. Shinta was a very ... appealing ... child. He was much loved by all of us."

She lifted a shoulder up in half a shrug. "What happened -- I regret it. Every day of my life, I've regretted it."

"You should have found another way," Kaoru said, rising from the steps and walking inside. The words had come quickly, rudely, but were heartfelt. _She _would have.

_Kenshin said Suri's own infant died of starvation before ... _

She sighed. Who was she to judge? She turned back, to offer an apology for the harsh words -- Kenshin had, if not forgiven her, at least accepted the woman at the dojo. She could grit her teeth and do the same.

Suri started coughing into her fist. "I'm sorry," she said, softly, to Kaoru. "I hope I do not give you this cold."

There was no anger in the woman's eyes for Kaoru's harsh words -- just a certain weariness. This was, Kaoru realized, a woman who'd seen terrible things in her life. She hadn't left her mountain home and come penniless to the city with five young grandchildren in tow because her life was _easy_. She was in desperate straits. _She can't even afford to give me the reaction that comment of mine deserved; she can't risk losing shelter here_.

Kaoru sighed, feeling a bit of pity for the woman's plight. She sat back down next to her, and said mildly, "I've probably already been exposed to whatever crud you have. The kids ... some kid or another in the classes always has a snotty nose."

Suri snorted. "Yes. And all it takes is one, and then the rest of them will be sick in a few days. I had seven of my own -- six lived to grow up -- and about thirty grand kids. There was always at least one of them sick." She frowned. "That was one of the strange things about Shinta -- he never seemed to be ill. Hungry, cold, sometimes, like the rest of us -- but he never contracted any of the illnesses the rest of us would get. I can remember twice, when cholera went through the village, and when influenza did, when he was the _only _person not sick and he tended everyone else. He wasn't very old."

"That sounds about right. He still never gets sick." Kaoru said. She knew _why, _but that was Kenshin's secret to keep or tell as he chose. Mostly, he just let people wonder about his appearance.

"Some people thought he was a spirit given human form," Suri said, quietly. "If he is, he's a good one. That hasn't changed at all, has it?"

"No." Kaoru smiled. "He's a very good man."

Yukio, followed by Chiyoko, ran out of the dojo, heading straight for Kenshin. Her husband caught the boy up, spun him in a full circle by his feet, and then slung the laughing toddler over his shoulder. Kenshin was grinning; she could hear Chiyoko issuing unnecessary apologies to Kenshin for the child's escape. The girl seemed almost afraid of Kenshin, despite his best efforts at easing her fears of him. _It's because senses they're alike, I think, _Kaoru thought, absently. _And it reminds her of what she is now._

She hadn't been entirely surprised when Chiyoko had taken to tending the younger children with an almost motherly interest. The two boys weren't very interested in being "mothered" by her, but the two younger girls had taken to following her around, and the three girls were never without the little boy with them.

Suri started coughing again. Kaoru gave her a look of concern; the woman was pale, and beads of sweat shone on her forehead. She was _old _-- seventies, at least. A cold like this couldn't be good for her. "You should go inside. It's chilly out here."

"Thank you, perhaps I will." Suri stood up with some difficulty, and disappeared inside.

-------------------


	28. Chapter 28

---------------------

Chapter 28

----------------------

Footsteps in the hall woke Kaoru. Heavy ones, making the floor boards creak, from a man with a long, loose stride. Kaoru identified her son's passage absently; a moment later, there was the much lighter stride of one of Suri's grandsons. "Kenji ..." she heard the older boy, Aki, whisper. "Where are you going?"

Kaoru lifted her head. It was almost dawn -- the sky was just beginning to grow light. She heard Kenji's muted response, "It's my morning to cook breakfast ..."

"Doesn't your mother do that?" Puzzlement, from the boy.

Kaoru heard Kenji's snort. He said in a low voice that wasn't quite muted by the thin shoji door, open a few inches for ventilation, "You wouldn't ask that if you'd ever tasted her cooking. We trade off, my father one day, then Chiyoko, then me."

"'M Grandmother would cook for you every morning ..." The boy volunteered. "'S not right for a man to do it. I'll go get her now!"

Kenji's laugh was soft, but amused. Kaoru was proud of his answer. "Your Grandmother's old, Aki, and weary. Don't you think she deserves to rest? I've cooked breakfast for the family since I was ten, and I'm glad to do it ..."

She heard the door to the kitchen creak shut, and couldn't distinguish any more words.

"That's not a bad idea, actually," Kenshin murmured.

"What is?" She rolled over and snuggled against him.

"Suri. We could use another hand around here to cook and clean -- and she's too old to find a job that would support those kids in a decent fashion." Kenshin slid his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. He nuzzled at her neck and slid a hand down her side, calloused fingers snagging against the smooth fabric of her sleeping robe. "Winter's coming and they'll need my help at the clinic. You could use a hand here."

"I'm not sure I want her around."

Kenshin sighed. His breath was warm against her shoulder, and she heard grief in that sigh. "Kaoru, this one has done many evil things in his life. This one has caused pain to small children every bit as bad as what Suri caused Shinta. This one has killed parents, left little boys orphans. Forgiving her ... I must. Because I am not better than she is."

"Don't say that!"

Footsteps, a child's, ran down the hall. They were rapid -- too rapid, panicky. The door slid open. "Something's wrong with my grandmother!"

It was the boy, Aki. He sounded terrified. "Something's wrong! I tried to wake her up to help Kenji! She won't wake up!"

Kenshin rolled to his feet, tying his yukata closed as he moved. He followed the boy down the hall at a run; Kaoru heard one of the little girls start crying, and then Chiyoko wailed. By the time that Kaoru untangled herself from the blankets and made her way down the hall, Kenshin was already in the girls' room.

Both little girls clung to each other. In the dim dawn light she could see it was the older girl who was sobbing. Chiyoka was on her knees wailing -- Kaoru stifled an urge to smack the child; it was the first time she'd seen the girl exhibit anything other than quiet, timid reserve.

Kenshin knelt by Suri's futon. Yukio, the little boy, clung to his grandmother's robes and looked up at Kenshin with scared brown eyes. Kenshin touched Suri's shoulder hesitantly, then a little harder. Grimly, he picked up the toddler and said quietly to Kaoru, "She's cold. It probably happened just after she went to bed."

"But she wasn't that sick!" Kaoru protested.

"Her heart, maybe ..." Kenshin glanced at the other children. He sighed, turned his eyes back to Kaoru, and she hadn't seen him look that lost in a very, very long time. He blinked rapidly, a couple of times, then, when Yukio issued a hiccupping sob, bounced the child on his hip a bit. "Shh, little one. We'll take care of you."

Kaoru held her arms out. "Here, I'll take him. You'd best go tell the authorities, ne?"

--------------------

The boy, Aki, and the girl, Iku, were the two eldest of the children -- almost exactly eleven months apart in age, they were both ten, with Iku about to turn eleven. Kenshin had guessed that they were younger at first. _Not enough food_, he thought. They were too thin and too short. He was rather familiar with the effects of _not enough food _... his own thin frame still bore evidence of his early upbringing.

Iku barely came up to Chiyoko's shoulder; Chiyoko was slight too, but she was naturally small, not stunted. You could tell the difference in the way she was built, and in the fact that, while thin, she wasn't scrawny. She was slender, but she had female curves and several months of (reluctant) sword training had given her a few muscles, too.

He shook his head, more convinced than ever that this was the right decision. And it wasn't one he'd made lightly; he and Kaoru had sat up until the early morning hours, after Suri's funeral, discussing it. _Five children ... plus Chiyoko ... they'll stretch the dojo's finances quite a bit, but we've dealt with worse. And it is a huge lifelong commitment._

Kaoru loved children as much as he did -- she hadn't hesitated to take in Yahiko, nor Kenji. _Five _kids at once ... she'd thought a bit harder about it, but in truth, they'd had the same concerns and they had mutually agreed it was worth it. _If I could have children of my own, we would have at least this many by now, if not more, God willing, _Kenshin thought.

He'd also discussed the matter with Kenji, mostly to make sure his son wouldn't feel slighted. Kenji had laughed at _that _suggestion. "I always wanted younger siblings, Father. Don't worry about it. And it's not like you can put them out on the street like stray dogs!"

Now, the two siblings stared at him silently, kneeling on the other side of the table. He'd called them in to talk to him -- because they were old enough, he thought, to make a few decisions for themselves. This wasn't a choice he could make unilaterally, without their agreement. _They're about the same age Yahiko was. _

It was the boy who spoke, before Kenshin could summon his thoughts. "Himura-san, may we stay another night? We'll find somewhere else in the morning."

The two children exchanged looks. He'd heard then whispering to each other earlier -- he suspected they'd been trying to come up with a plan of some sort for survival. He sighed, "You can stay here as long as you want."

A blink, from the boy. The girl looked at her brother, then back at Kenshin. She said slowly, "We didn't think ... why would you ..."

"Please don't tell me this is because we're family," Aki said, suspiciously. "We have family in Himura, too. They wouldn't take us in."

Kenshin sighed. Likely, the family there -- and the whole village was interrelated -- couldn't afford to take in this many hungry mouths. He answered, simply, "I like children, and Kaoru and I can have none of our own. If you wish to stay, you are more than welcome." He held a finger up, "There will be some requirements, however."

"What do you want?" Aki demanded, wrapping his arms around his sister's shoulders rather protectively. "We'll work. We're both old enough to find work. We'll bring in money."

"Hai. You will work. Chores, morning and night. You will attend school after your chores in the morning, along with your younger siblings. Then you will train with Kenji -- all four of you older kids -- in the afternoon."

"The girls?" Aki said, dubiously, though his eyes had lit at the mention of sword training.

"Kaoru-san," Iku murmured, to her brother.

"Yes, the girls too." Kenshin said, with a smile. He held a finger up, "I consider you children family. However, I want to make you aware of something that may change your feelings about staying here."

They regarded him uneasily. He sighed. "I am ... not normal. I do not age and I cannot be killed easily. I will live forever unless someone cuts my head off. Which people may occasionally try to do."

"Witchcraft." Aki said, shortly. "Are you a demon? Or cursed by magic?"

"I honestly do not know. I consider myself just a man, but ..." Kenshin regarded the two gravely. "Others feel different. You will find, if you stay here, that people outside these walls will treat you as if you are tainted."

"You have plenty of students ..." Aki pointed out.

"Aa. Not everyone believes I am evil, and I do not teach the students in any case. I have ... made an effort ... to win the trust and friendship of many in the village. But there is a deep division between those who like me and those who fear me, that there is. And every year, I fear, more cross that divide. You will need to deal with those who fear me regularly if you live here." Kenshin frowned at them. "Iku, it could make finding a husband difficult for you. And Aki, you will be the subject of ... comments ... by people outside these walls."

They were silent.

"If you chose to stay -- it is your choice -- you will have a home here, you will join my family. Do you understand?"

The siblings exchanged glances. Aki said angrily, "We have nowhere else to go. We would be beggars on the street if we left. Do you think that is a better option?"

Kenshin shrugged. "You are both old enough to work. I could find you positions with friends, in their households. It would be hard work, and life would not be easy, but you will not leave my home to be beggars, that you will not. I am not that cruel." He held a finger up. "I ask you to make this decision for yourselves, and your younger siblings. It is an adult decision, but both of you have lived hard lives. You are already more acquainted with life's cruelties than some adults I know, that you are."

Much later, Iku would tell him that it was the respect he showed for her that made her decide. That, and the promise of _school. _She glanced at her brother, then said before he could speak, "We'll stay."

"Sister!"

She gave her brother a quelling look. Kenshin noted that the boy shut up; now he knew how the status quo worked. The pair of them seemed to work as a team much of the time, but when push came to shove, he suspected Iku could overrule her brother. She was older -- and far more stubborn, if he didn't miss his guess. She said politely, "And thank you. It is more than ... more than I expected, Himura-san. To live here, with you, in this house ..."

"Call me Kenshin." He said, quietly. "We are family, then."


	29. Chapter 29

Chapter 29

-------------------

Author's Note: Umm. Squeee. The web site I mentioned as occupying most of my time is all finished and bright and shiny and I redirected traffic over to it Sunday from the old site and it's getting thousands of visitors a day and _not crashing _and it appears it's nice and stable and whew all done ... does a happy dance and the users seem to like it ... Now I can take my web developer hat off and put the writer/editor hat back on and life is good. And I am so much less stressed.

So now I have five fanfics to finish, don't I? (Four under this handle ... LOL.)

I have another chapter of this story, two chapters of the As a Mother and a Father, the first chapter of the sequel to Slayer of Nightmares (it needs a title!) and a few other things to upload in the next several days. :-)

Oh, and two words for my Kenshin loving friends: Saiunkoku Monogatari. Go download the AVIs or watch it on You Tube. It's not licensed outside of Japan yet. It's _very _worth watching and I am shamelessly plugging this series. Shuurei is now officially my favorite female lead cartoon character since Elisa Maza -- (There's more about it in my blog on Firefox News at firefox dot org. Please feel free to pop in to the site and say hello ...)

On with the story:-)

-------------------

"Iku-chan," Chiyoko said, with fairly strained patience, over beef hot pot at the Akabeko, and sounding every bit like an older sister, "Sit like a _lady_."

The two of them were dressed almost alike; Kaoru had scored a deal on bolts of cloth for kimonos for all the girls, and they were both dressed in matching pale yellow. The color looked good on Iku, but washed out Chiyoko's pale skin, making her look wan and ill.

She wasn't sick by any means -- Kenshin glanced at her, over his food, noting the athletic way she sat. A year of hard training had given the short girl solid muscles and heavily callused hands. She was a lot tougher and stronger than she appeared, and she'd stopped complaining about the sword training now that she had a pack of younger siblings to keep in line.

Chiyoko, as their bossy adopted big sister, pretty much _had _to be able to flatten the rest of the kids, particularly the other girls. Kenshin wasn't complaining about the minor sibling rivalry if it kept his Immortal daughter training hard. Having other siblings to compete with had motivated her where reason ("People will take your head if they can!") had failed ...

Iku tucked her feet underneath her -- she'd been slouching sloppily -- and stuck her tongue out at Chiyoko.

"Girls," Kenshin said, warningly. "No fighting."

They both looked at him, and fell silent, chastened.

"Thank you."

_Kenji _had been easy, Kenshin realized now, reflecting on the pack of children that had filled the dojo to bursting the last six months. Looking back, Kenshin realized just how remarkably good-tempered the boy had been. Even _Yahiko _had been easy, simply because he was old enough to reason with, and there had only been _one _of him.

With six kids, with the youngest only barely out of knappies and the oldest fifteen ... well, he'd learned some new definitions of the word _patience_ in the last six months. At least Chiyoko was a competent and willing babysitter and generally not a problem. No, his worries about Chiyoko might keep him up nights, but none of them were exactly her doing. If anything, she was too obedient -- Kenshin well remembered fifteen himself. Teenagers were _supposed _to be a bit defiant and oppositional; it was simply part of growing up.

Chiyoko never argued, worked hard and did as she was told. Her initial meekness had faded, but she seemed to try very hard to _please_ rather than test any limits whatsoever. Kenshin found it a bit odd at times, but he wasn't complaining, really. He was grateful he could count on at least one of the kids to _always _do as the adults said. She could be bossy with the younger children, but she was also generally _right_, and fair, and impartial. And the little ones listened to her, with a clear line of command that went Chiyoko, Kenji, and then Kaoru and Kenshin.

And that was why he was here today, at the Akabeko -- Chiyoko had helped with chores and with the younger children without complaint at the dojo for months, and he figured she deserved a _thank you _in the form of a little attention that wasn't divided six ways between her and the other young ones. He worried sometimes that it would be easy to take her for granted.

Iku was along because Chiyoko had _asked _-- probably because Iku was closest in age to Chiyoko (though there were four years between them) and she was savvy enough to recognize the worth of having her younger sister's support in family matters ... Iku _worshipped _Chiyoko. Or maybe she just liked Iku. Or, possibly, it was because she was still wary of him -- even after a year, she was quieter and more reserved around him than she was around anyone else.

Kenshin was enjoying the meal; when he felt another Immortal's buzz, it was utterly unexpected. Chiyoko gave him a wide-eyed look. He'd told her, repeatedly, of the danger other Immortals would pose to her.

"What is it?" Iku said, seeing their twin expressions -- dismay, on his, and shock on Chiyoko's. She'd never felt the buzz from anyone other than him before.

"One like us," Kenshin said, rising from the table so that he could see the doorway. He took stock of his surroundings, quickly, debating a quick retreat versus a calculated greeting of the stranger. If he'd been alone, he'd have calmly met the guy since they were in a public place, but he had Chiyoko to worry about.

To his relief, it was only Marshall -- whom he'd been wanting to talk to anyway, for several months, and just hadn't found the chance.

"Marshall-sama, it is good to see you," he said, politely, as the Westerner made his way to their table.

"Himura-san," Marshall said, "May I join you?"

"Of course," Kenshin said, "I am pleased by your company."

The man settled himself down crosslegged, looking uncomfortable about being seated on the floor. Kenshin exchanged a look with Chiyoko, who lifted an eyebrow, begging for an introduction and an explanation. Any of the other women in his life would simply go, "Hey, who are you?" Including, likely, Iku in a second, if not for the _sama _greeting he'd used that had put both kids on notice that this was a man with rank.

"Marshall-sama, these are my daughters, Chiyoko and Iku," he introduced them.

"Adopted," Marshall murmured. "Jessica has mentioned them. She says you love children."

"Aa, I do. They are good girls, Marshall-sama." Kenshin smiled at them. "Girls, this is Jessica's uncle."

"Adopted," Chiyoko said, in almost exactly the tone of voice that Marshall had used. And Marshall's tone of voice had indicated he was _correcting _Kenshin -- reminding him of what he was, a man who could have no children of his own. Of course, Marshall was the same thing that Kenshin was; something _other_. And Marshall himself was adopted, naturally.

Kenshin gave her a mildly surprised look. She was normally so meek, he was startled to hear _any _comment out of her, even one that well deserved -- and that clever. But Marshall nodded and agreed with her, "I was. My father could have no children. Actually, I'm Jessica's great-uncle. You're ... young. You're very new, are you not?"

"I'm fifteen," she met his eyes with a level look. "It's been a year."

"Himura-san has been teaching you the sword, ne?" Marshall couldn't miss her solid build, or the very callused state of her hands.

"My son has. I ... do not teach." Kenshin said, though he'd been tempted to take over Chiyoko's training recently. At least he wanted to give her a few lessons on footwork and agility more suited to her height -- he truly understood what it was to be particularly short and small and face off against opponents twice, sometimes three times, his size -- men who generally had substantially more power and mass behind their blows. Kenji hadn't had to deal with that problem since well before he hit puberty!

"You were what, twelve when you died?" Marshall said, a little rudely by Kenshin's estimation. But then, this man wasn't ever really polite.

"I was fourteen when I died. A year ago." Chiyoko's voice was carefully controlled. She had already given him this information; Kenshin wondered if the man was really listening to what she said.

"Tcha! I didn't mean to imply you were a child." Marshall gave her a grin. "Far from it. You're a pretty little thing."

Chiyoko gave him a little smile; she looked pleased, if wary of, the compliment.

"Marshall-sama," Kenshin said, abruptly, not liking that turn in the discussion, "Can I help you with something?"

"Hai." Marshall eyed Kenshin for a moment; Kenshin returned the look with a rurouni smile. Marshall snorted, not fooled by that expression. "You and I may well end up family, you know."

"The thought has occurred to me," Kenshin said, quietly.

"It worries you," Marshall said, quietly. "You don't like me. I'm _sorry, _Kenshin. I was drunk."

"Mmm." It had taken Marshall a year to issue that apology in person, which, by Kenshin's estimate, was about 364 days too long. And as apologies went, it wasn't exactly a thoughtful one. Kenshin said shortly, "You were _very _drunk."

Abruptly, but with some dignity, Marshall said, "There will be a dinner party, at my place, in two week's time. You and your lady wife are invited -- and Chiyoko-san, as well. And I promise I'll stay much more sober this time."

He smiled again at Chiyoko, who met his gaze and then glanced at Kenshin, obviously checking his reaction.

Ordinarily, Kenshin would have had no problems telling this man that he wasn't interested in parties with Westerners -- he just wasn't impressed by fame or power or, well, _parties_. He'd turned his back on plenty of wealthy and powerful men in his time, scorning what they offered. Some had even been men he respected. But ... Kenji loved Jessica, that much was clear, and if they were to marry someday, it would best if Kenji had a good reputation in Jessica's circle.

It wouldn't do for Kenshin for insult Jessica's uncle by refusing the invitation -- the offense created could easily affect Kenji. After a bit of thought on the matter, he smiled politely, and said simply, "We would be pleased to attend."

"Good, pleased to hear it." Marshall nodded cheerfully. He sighed, and stood back up, "And now I need to take my leave of you -- I sensed you in here when I was walking past and thought I would say hello, but I am overdue for an appointment."

After he was gone, and out of earshot, Kenshin said very seriously to Chiyoko, "I do not trust that one, Chiyoko-chan. When we attend, I want you to keep Kenji or I in sight at all times. Do you understand?"

She blinked at him. "Kenshin-san, he seems nice enough to me ..."

"Don't trust him," Kenshin said, roughly. "Just ... don't."

--------------------------------

Jessica's carriage was not _new_, Kaoru realized, as she sat inside the fancy conveyance. It had been freshly painted on the outside, but inside it showed some use. The fabric cushions on the seats was just a little bit worn, and the paint inside the door was faded where hands would fall when climbing in or out. The curtains didn't quite match, either, and there were little details that hinted that Jessica was either very frugal or necessarily pinching her pennies.

She suspected the former, having known the woman for over a year. Equally unsurprising was that Jessica had thought to send them a ride because of rather bad weather.

Kenshin sat across from her, looking uneasy. He had confided earlier that he thought that Marshall was up to something. Not for the first -- or, she suspected, the last -- time, she had suggested in response to his concern, "Why don't you borrow the sakabato from Yahiko?"

Kenshin, to her surprise, had genuinely appeared to consider the idea. Despite obvious reasons for needing one, he'd refused to carry _any _sword for years. And he wouldn't even discuss this decision with hr, though she suspected it was as simple as stubbornness -- a refusal to let anyone force him into becoming anything he didn't wish to. He no longer wanted to be a swordsman, therefore, he would not carry a sword. He simply wanted to be her husband, the father to a pack of adopted brats they both loved dearly, and he just wanted to be an ordinary man.

However, he'd eventually shook his head, and said, "Ie, Kaoru. I'll not be the first to give offense. I do not normally carry a sword; to do so now would be to say that I don't trust Marshall."

"But you _don't _trust Marshall," she'd pointed out, a bit tartly. "His kind kill each other for sport."

"I could deal with Marshall with my bare hands," he'd said, dismissively. And probably truthfully. Kaoru hadn't been teaching swordsmanship for twenty-five years without learning to size up the skill of swordsman with no blows ever exchanged. Marshall was competent -- from what they understood of the lives of Immortals, he had to be, or he would not have made it to eighty -- but he was not in Kenshin's league as a fighter. He was _nothing _close to the level of the man who'd come so close to killing Kenshin a few years back. Few people were.

_That _man was dead, courtesy of Saito -- when she'd worried about him returning and going after Kenshin a second time, to Sanosuke, Sano had given her that reassuring bit of news. _And all of us will go to our graves without Kenshin ever knowing ... _She thought, with amusement.

She glanced out the window. It was raining hard, and she was grateful for Jessica's thoughtfulness in sending the carriage. The three of them -- her, Chiyoko, and Kenshin -- would have arrived looking like drowned rats, otherwise. Kenji had gone ahead, earlier in the morning, before the storm had arrived.

_You know you're a friend when you get drafted for chores, _Kaoru thought, with some amusement. Kenji might have headed to the Marshall's house early, but it was only to help Jessica out with some needed cleaning -- a number of guests were invited to the dinner, and Kenji was helping with the set up. Kaoru was quite confident that there was nothing else going on there other than, likely, quite a bit of banter -- most of it off color. _Kenji's a lot like his father -- he won't make a move on her until he's absolutely sure she wants him forever, _Kaoru though, a little amused by this. _Thing is, Jessica _does _want him._

And she was reasonably sure Jessica wanted him _forever_ -- Kaoru rather recognized the thoughtful look in her eyes, when Jessica believed no one else was looking and she had Kenji in her view. She'd stood in Jessica's shoes, wanting desperately and unable to _have_. She was halfway tempted to have a few pointed words with her son, but the knowledge that if Kenji made the decision to leave for England with Jessica she might never see him again had stayed her words. _I will miss him desperately ... he is a grown man, and it is time for him to leave the nest, but still. Sometimes I thought he would be with us forever. _

The carriage took an unexpected left turn, away from the route through the market that was the fastest way to the Marshall's house. She stiffened for a moment, surprised, then recognized the road -- it skirted the river, a bit out of the way, but there would be less traffic. A memory of Kenshin, covered in mud, and an equally filthy (but alive!) little boy surfaced ... pedestrian traffic was reason enough to avoid the market, particularly since she was given to understand that Jessica's team of horses was new and a little bit green -- they'd shied last week at a lady's umbrella. Jessica had hit her head on the window and had been left with a nasty bruise.

_Yukio, _she thought, thinking of the toddler. _My son, now_. _Mine._

The others were her brood now as well ... but Yukio was different. He was the baby she'd always quietly dreamed of, but who she had not ever even mentioned wanting, for fear of hurting Kenshin -- she knew Kenshin had wanted children of his own as well, and what was the point of rubbing salt into that wound?

Yukio was almost three now, young enough to still be baby-sweet. All he would ever remember was her, and she knew she spoiled him a bit, but ... baby. _Her _baby. She loved the other children too, and a year had been more than enough time to make them all _hers_ in her heart ... but with Yukio it was indefinably different. It wasn't that she had more love for the kid, but it was _different_. He was the baby, the youngest, the most vulnerable. And he was _hers _now.

The carriage abruptly bumped to a halt. For a moment, she assumed there was something blocking the road ... then she realized both Kenshin and Chiyoko had that _look _-- the one that said they sensed another one of their kind. Chiyoko looked scared; Kenshin's mouth was set in a thin, hard line and his eyes had acquired a hard glint. "Stay here."

He opened the door, hopped down, and disappeared out of sight towards the front of the carriage. She heard him say, "Can I help you ... HEY!"

The _hey _was delivered in a tone of anger that she rarely heard out of her rurouni, particularly these days. That decided her ... she opened the door again and jumped out into the rain, feet splashing in the mud, and ignoring Chiyoko's frightened protest of, "Kaoru-mama, he said stay _here_!"

Kenshin was silent, now, amber-eyed and lethal. The pouring rain had plastered his red hair flat to his skull. Unarmed, he was facing a lean Western man -- the foreigner was armed with a Spanish rapier, and as Kaoru watched, he made a lethal slashing swing at Kenshin. Kenshin leaped out of the way, going _over _the sword, landing on his hands with a splash in a puddle, then doing a handspring back to his feet. He kept moving, ducking under a second blow from the sword, getting inside the range of the weapon ... he drove the heel of his hand up towards the man's nose for what would have been a killing blow for anyone other than an Immortal.

_That's right. He doesn't need to pull his punches ... he can kill this man and he'll come back to life. _

The stranger leaned back, away from the blow, and Kenshin's strike caught him in the jaw rather than the nostrils. He staggered away, bleeding from the mouth -- Kenshin kept coming, spinning to kick the guy in the head but connecting with his shoulder instead, then throwing half a dozen other blows that might each have each ended the fight if they'd struck him. None did, at least not where they were aimed -- Kenshin's opponent was obviously nearly as good as he was.

And he was armed.

The man managed to get away from Kenshin, bring his sword back into play, and, to her horror, level a blow at Kenshin that would have taken his head off if Kenshin hadn't thrown his arm up. Steel bit deeply into Kenshin's arm; the sound was like an axe biting chopping into kindling. _Crack_. The momentum of the blow flung Kenshin's fist into his own head as well; he staggered backwards, eyes glazing in shock.

The man kept coming ... but Kenshin recovered quickly, blocked another sword strike with the same (horribly mangled) forearm, and then catch the man's sword arm in his good hand. With a savage twist and a jerk of his knee he dislocated the guy's elbow. The man howled in pain and dropped the sword.

The two sprang apart. Kenshin's right arm was shattered, slashed open in two places, and it dangled grotesquely from bits of flesh and sinew. _He could lose his arm even if he survives this fight and he's right-handed ..._ Kaoru thought, desperately. _Why won't he carry a sword? This is insanity! _

Blood ran freely from the arm, trickling in a steady flow down over his fingers, spurting when he moved, splattering on the rain-soaked ground. It was all over his kimono and hakama, even covering his sandaled feet in a slick red tide that was coming too quickly for the rain to wash off. She realized it was _too much _blood just as Kenshin's eyes rolled back. He staggered a couple of times, clearly fighting to keep his feet, fighting for his _life_, but then he went to his knees. His eyes held the blank incomprehension of unconsciousness even if he was still upright ... Kenshin was going down fighting, but he _was _going down from blood loss.

The swordsman calmluy leaned over, picked his rapier up off the ground in his uninjured left hand, and with a smirk, a _smirk, _he pulled his arm back for a beheading blow. He moved without any apparent hurry.

"No!" Kaoru sprang forward. _I'll kill him! _she thought, intending to rip the man limb from limb with her bare hands ... somehow. The fact that he'd just taken out Kenshin didn't matter ... she wasn't going to let her beloved die. But somebody flashed past her, silent and deadly. Without a word, with her kimono hitched up past her knees, Chiyoko launched herself at the stranger.

He swung the sword at her. She ducked under the blow, caught his wrist, _twisted _in a fashion remarkably similar to what Kenshin had done to the guy's _other _arm, but instead of letting it fall, she caught the sword by the handle when he dropped it. And she kept moving -- she spun a complete circle, leveled the sword at the guy, and efficiently ran him through the gut. Then she planted a foot against his thigh while he was still staring at her in shock, shoved him _off _the blade, and -- to Kaoru's utter shock, Chiyoko efficiently and without any hesitation took the man's head off. The look of shock on the man's face was almost comical ... he hadn't been expecting an attack from Chiyoko, and that very surprise had cost him his life.

_Well, _Kaoru thought giddily, _He had it coming, that's for sure. Attacking an unarmed man! _

Chiyoko staggered back, dropping the saber. It clattered on the ground. "Get away ..." she warned, eyes going wide.

And then the lightshow began. Chiyoko sobbed in terror as lightning crackled across her small body. She fell to her knees, then to her hands and knees, as the energy discharged. The carriage team bolted; Kaoru spun around to see their vehicle disappearing down the road. The driver appeared to be encouraging them to run ... she didn't blame him, though suddenly she wondered _why _the carriage had stopped in the first place.

Moments later the Quickening was over. Chiyoko sat up on her haunches, tears streaming down her face. Her hair was wild, and there was mud all over her clothing.

Perhaps five minutes had passed since the carriage had stopped. The rain was coming down ever harder, washing the blood away from Kenshin's still, pale form in a trickling tide. And Chiyoko didn't say a word.

"Go get Megumi," Kaoru finally said, kneeling next to Kenshin. He was motionless -- not breathing, heart stopped. _Dead_.

_Please let everything we've learned be right ... _she pulled his head into her lap. It lolled limply. His eyes were open, staring straight ahead, pupils dilated. He had mud in his hair and his arm was horrifically mangled. _Please let him come back to me again. Please. _

Chiyoko dropped the sword and abruptly bolted at a dead run in the direction of the clinic.

--------------------

Megumi heaved herself to her feet from her desk when she heard the pounding on the clinic's door. It was after regular hours; whoever was there likely had an emergency. She sighed, feeling a bit of uncomfortable resentment at the idea of dealing with an emergency right now ...

She was just so damned tired. And she had to pee. Again. And her back hurt, and her feet wouldn't fit in her sandals. A month to go ...

_No. I cannot think wrong thoughts about this. A child, at my age ... we were not sure if I could conceive. Forty isn't too old for children, but it's old enough to make the odds lower ... I've made eight months ... Sano is _so _happy ... _

A year and a few months ago, she would never have pictured Sanosuke as a giddily excited father-to-be. But he was; he was utterly delighted. It had taken long enough for her to conceive that they had thought there would be no children from their marriage ... and then one day she'd woken nauseous and her cycles hadn't come that month and she'd _known_.

_A child of my own ...and of Sano ... _She couldn't wait to see her husband holding her baby ...

But right now, her feet hurt. And she had to pee. Again. And somebody was pounding on the door because there was likely some emergency that she'd have to deal with, unwieldy pregnancy or no.

She opened the door quickly, and started to demand an explanation of the emergency ... then realized that the person on the other side of the door was Chiyoko, Kenshin's little waif of a fosterling. The girl was soaked to the skin, she had a splash of blood across her kimono that the rain hadn't managed to was entirely away, and she was shivering violently. "Kenshin ..." she said through lips that blue from cold. There was something terrible in the girl's eyes, as well.

"Sanosuke!" Megumi shouted, just as Sano appeared from around the corner. "Sir Ken's hurt!"

"Crap. Where?" He demanded in a thunderous voice. Chiyoko flinched in alarm and shrank away from him; Sanosuke took a deep breath in and said in a calmer voice, "Does he still have his head?"

"Hai! He's down by the ... the river ..." She stammered, words coming in fits and starts. "His arm ... the man hit him in the arm with a sword, he was bleeding ..."

That was a fair distance to walk. Megumi didn't think she could make it in her current condition in any reasonable amount of time and, as much as she loved Sir Ken, she wasn't about to try -- not with the baby to worry about. "Sanosuke. Take a blanket and go get him. Chiyoko, here, wear this ..." She grabbed her own cloak off a peg by the door and thrust it at the shivering girl.

"Oh no, Megumi-san, it'll drag in the mud ..." Chiyoko protested -- the top of her head was a few inches below Megumi's shoulder; she was going to be lost in Megumi's cloak.

"I care little about the mud. You're going to freeze to death, and you have to show Sanosuke where he is!"

The argument worked -- the girl took the cloak, yanked it around her shoulders, then, with fistfuls of fabric held in either hand so it wouldn't trail on the ground, she ran after Sanosuke. Sano was already headed for the river at an almost dead run.

-----------------------

The rain had quit and there was a crowd circled around Kenshin when Sanosuke arrived. Sano bit back a savage oath when he saw the number of witnesses -- twenty or thirty at least, all drawn to the spectacle of the death of the famous Hitokiri Battousai.

And he _was _dead -- Sanosuke knew that as soon as he saw Kaoru's face. Something dark lurked in her blue eyes; she stared up at him, looking as lost and frightened as he'd ever seen her. Kaoru cradled Kenshin's body to her chest like he was a sleeping child -- she was bathed in his blood despite the rain that still fell, and the puddles around her were stained crimson. So _much _blood, even allowing for the diluting factor of the rain ... all from an arm so mangled it wasn't really recognizable as a limb if not for the hand attached to the end. When she moved, it was _floppy_.

"'E's dead, Kamiya-san," a man was saying, not unkindly. "Let us take him back to your dojo, now."

"Don't touch him!" Kaoru hissed angrily, "He's still alive! His heart still beats, he breaths! I'll not let you bury him yet!"

A murmur rose from the crowd, the general ghist of which was that Kamiya-san was fucking nuts with grief. _She's not! _Sanosule realized, with a jolt of sudden respect for Kaoru's intelligence. _She can't acknowledge he's dead, she _has _to convince them he's alive if he has any chance of living here after this ... at least plant a seed of doubt so that when he appears in public later, people can say, _'Eh, we were wrong, he was just bad hurt, not dead ...'

Sanosuke shoved his way rudely through the people, "Let me through!"

Kaoru heard his voice, looked up, and breathed an obvious sigh of relief. "Chiyoko found you! Help me get him to Megumi's ... he's _not dead yet_!"

Sano crouched beside her and pressed his fingers to Kenshin's throat. His best friend's flesh was still, cooling rapidly. Sanosuke had seen enough corpses in his life to know when he was touching one. He swallowed back an urge to vomit in reaction -- Kenshin wasn't _supposed _to die, even if it was only temporary -- and lied loudly, "He has a pulse, she's right."

Chiyoko stripped out of Megumi's cloak and thrust the fabric at him, "Sano-san, wrap him up in this. We need to keep him warm."

_And that's another smart girl, _Sanosuke gave her a sharp look sideways. _Kenshin seems to collect them. She realizes we need to have as few people as possible observe Dead Kenshin ... if he's wrapped up in clothing, and they can't see a mask of death on his features, then it's more believable that he's only horribly wounded. _

He lifted the body from Kaoru's arms and did as Chiyoko had suggested. Kenshin was heavier than he'd expected -- the guy looked short and scrawny, but decades of sword training translated to dense bone and muscle. Still, Sanosuke found him a relatively light burden -- Sano was used to hefting far heavier patients in the clinic these days.

With Kenshin's cloak-wrapped body cradled to his chest he headed back for the clinic at a run. Chiyoko and Kaoru splashed through the runnels of rainwater behind him.

------------------------

There was a heavy weight across his chest -- Kenshin came to that awareness slowly, consciousness filtering through layers of exhaustion and fuzziness. The weight was an arm and there was a warm body pressed against his -- _Kaoru_, he recognized, with utter relief. She was okay. He had been certain his life was lost, and terrified that Kaoru and Chiyoko were going to be killed as well.

_Somebody stopped the other Immortal ... _

"You're awake." Her head had been resting against his shoulder. She sat up, and smiled in relief. Her eyes were red. She'd been crying.

"Aa." He started to sit up, and discovered his arm was splinted and strapped to his chest. _I stopped a sword with my forearm, _he remembered, _twice._ "How bad?" He asked, of his arm. He could see fingers sticking out at the end of a voluminous amount of bandages. He hadn't lost it, but that didn't mean he'd ever be able to use it again.

"Heh." Kaoru barked a blackly amused laugh. "We could almost see the flesh knitting back together. You've been out all night, but you were healing anyway. You didn't start breathing again until dawn. It's almost noon."

He wiggled his fingers -- they moved without much pain. His arm felt fine. He'd broken a few limbs; it didn't have the queerly disconnected wobbly feeling of a bad break . "That quickly?" He marveled.

"Leave the splint on," she cautioned, "Even if you're healed, enough people saw you mortally wounded ... you can't appear uninjured tomorrow. So leave it; we want to avoid as many questions as we can."

"Koishii," he swallowed hard, "What happened? Did you ..." _kill the man in my defense_? He didn't dare voice those words.

She shook her head. She understood him perfectly. "I didn't, but I would've."

"He would have _killed _you," Kenshin said, with confidence. "But who ..."

"Chi-chan did it." Kaoru said, after a long moment's hesitation. "Kenshin, I've never seen anything like that."

"Chiyoko?" He blinked, picturing the meek girl. He'd have expected her to cower in the mud, not fight back. She had never seemed to have any fighting spirit at all. Truthfully, he had expected her to freeze up, lose her head, and die during her first fight.

"I think she as terrified she'd lose you," Kaoru offered him her hand, and pulled him into a sitting position. His head spun. "Kenji's taught her all the moves she needed -- she put everything together and fought well, Kenshin. I was surprised too, but she didn't even hesitate."

He contemplated that for a moment. "I could have sworn she didn't like me much," he finally said. "She killed to protect me?"

"Don't go all guilty on me, Himura Kenshin," Kaoru said, sounding annoyed. "Likely he'd have come after Chiyoko next, and maybe me as a witness."

"Maybe." Kenshin glanced around the room -- they were at Megumi's clinic, he recognized one of the bedrooms in the back that was for convalescing patients. He sighed. "She did the right thing. I'm just surprised."

"Mm." Kaoru stood up and then said, "You think you can stand up? Jessica's sent her carriage over and this time Sanosuke's driving it. I'd like to get you home."

"You think we were betrayed?" Kenshin tilted his head, considering that. He'd assumed _ambushed_, because he'd been too busy fighting to think beyond that. But it was certainly possible. Marshall could have easily arranged the attack. He just couldn't figure out a sufficient motive. Remotely, he could conceive of the man trying to take out Kenji, but why him?

"What do you think?" Kaoru said sourly.

"By who?" Kenshin shook his head, not entirely dismissing Marshall as the source of the attack, but not convinced that was the explanation, either. He realized his hair was loose when he did so. It was also a little damp and smelled of soap. He remembered mud and blood and decided Kaoru had probably cleaned him up. He raked his fingers through his red locks, finding snarls.

Kaoru fished in her sleeve, found the thong he used to tie his hair back and a comb, and motioned him to turn around. One-handed, he couldn't do his own hair.

"Kenshin," she said, as carefully detangled his long red locks, "A lot of people saw you dead."

He said a very bad and un-Kenshin-like word. Kaoru only smiled briefly in response, not the slightest bit shocked. "We told 'em you were alive -- Sano and I -- but I don't know, some people might not believe it."

"Mm." When she was finished with his hair, he gathered his feet underneath himself and shakily stood up. His head spun, but he succeeding in _staying _upright and not fainting by force of will. Kaoru slid her arm around his waist and without hesitation he leaned on her.

"I saw you dead too," she murmured. "It's scary. Even though I knew you'd probably come back, it was scary. I kept thinking, what if we are wrong about what you are?"

He sighed. "Unfortunately, we are right about me."


	30. Chapter 30

Chapter 30

-----------------

Later that afternoon, he arrived home and suffered being carried inside by Sanosuke while faking grave illness -- as soon as the dojo's gates were closed behind them, Sano set him down so quickly that he practically dropped him and said roughly, "You _can _walk."

"Oro!" Kenshin landed more-or-less lightly on his feet. He was rapidly feeling better -- while his arm twinged when he moved it wrong, and he was lightheaded, overall, he'd sometimes felt worse after a hard day of training. "And here I was enjoying the ride ..."

Sano gave him a dark, un-amused look. "I'm not sure if that statement insults your manhood or mine."

"Hah!" Kenshin snorted a laugh. Then, more seriously, he said, "Thank you, Sano, again. As usual."

Sanosuke roughly hugged him, then said, "Will you stop scaring us, already? I'm getting too old for this."

Kenshin gave him a startled look, leaning back and staring up at his friend. _Too old. _

It wasn't true, really -- Sanosuke was only a few years older than Kaoru. Early forties. But, he realized, Sanosuke _was _looking older these days ... there was grey in his untamable mass of hair, and he had deep wrinkles around his eyes and across his forehead. Smile lines, around his mouth, too. The boy he'd known years ago was long gone, replaced by a middle-aged man with the same laugh and the same eyes.

Kenshin shook his head. Sanosuke wasn't old at all, really ... he clapped Sano on the arm with his unbound hand and said, "You want to go out this weekend? It's been awhile, my friend. We could get Yahiko and Katsu ..."

Sanosuke sighed. "Can't. Megumi's pretty ... pregnant ... somebody's got to tend to the patients who need care at night. I don't want her doing it."

Oh, right. Kenshin frowned. Megumi was actually a few years older than Sano; they'd all been surprised when she'd announced the pregnancy. She was old, for a first birth, though it -- by obvious evidence -- wasn't impossible. He hoped, prayed, that everything turned out well and Sano and Megumi had a healthy child in a few weeks. Sano was going to make a fantastic father.

"So, do you want a girl or a boy?" Kenshin said, conversationally, as they walked up to the house.

"Don't care." Sanosuke shrugged. Then he said, with eyes twinkling in a way that said he'd actually given it some thought, "A little girl would be good, I guess. Less trouble, right? Less fighting. Girls are quiet and sweet and don't get in nearly as much trouble."

"One word: Misao." Kenshin teased.

"I have one like that, I'm running away and moving in with your sensei!" Sanosuke choked at the thought. "Speaking of the weasel, have you heard anything from her recently?"

"Not from her. We received a letter from Aoshi last month -- Misao's pregnant again too." That, Kenshin reflected, was less of a surprise. Kaoru had teased Misao about being a rabbit, not a weasel, after the fifth baby

"That's what, seven?"

"Nine." Kenshin said. "I'd wonder how she kept up with them, but ... well, it's Misao."

Sanosuke laughed. "We all should go visit, you know. Maybe next summer ."

"Aa. I'd like to introduce Chiyoko and Misao." Kenshin smiled fondly, remembering the weasel-girl, who'd grown up from a hyperactive teenage ninja to a hyperactive mother of several children, all equally energetic. It had been four or five years the last time they'd visited; Aoshi had looked ... dignified ... amid the chaos, a stern rock surrounded by swirling sea of children. But he'd also seemed happy, in an odd sort of way; he still rarely smiled, but he _had _done so twice, once when holding the youngest of his clan and once at Misao, in response to a teasing grin from her.

Chiyoko, he thought, would benefit from Misao as a role model -- as another example of a woman who could fight and be _feminine _at the same time, if not, ah, ladylike. And though Misao wasn't that much younger than Kaoru, she _seemed _decades more youthful. It was the giddy energy.

"Are you sure that's wise?" Sanosuke laughed. "Chiyoko might be scarred for life if you dropped her in the middle of _that _clan."

"Call it a learning experience," Kenshin's own smile said, yes, he _had _contemplated the effect of that pack of brats on the painfully reserved girl.

-------------------

Chiyoko was even quieter than usual over dinner, however, and Kenshin's good mood vanished as he watched her. Very early she asked quietly, "I'm not very hungry. May I be excused?"

Half her food was remaining on her place. Aki promptly said, "Can I have her fish?"

"Me!" Yukio begged, extending chubby fingers towards the plate. "Me!"

"After you finish eating, Chi-chan, you may go." Kenshin said, softly, ignoring the younger children -- they had enough to eat, but never passed up a chance for _more_. Chiyoko, by contrast, had probably never gone hungry a day in her life. "Then you can go."

She gave him an unreadable look before picking at the food on her plate. For someone who wanted to leave early, she took forever to finish eating -- she picked desultorily at her fish and vegetables, shoving them around with her chopsticks. Finally, after the other kids had actually left to go do evening chores, only she and Kaoru and Kenshin were left. "Can I go?" She repeated, though she still had some fish left.

"Aa. But I want to talk to you later."

She nodded once, not questioning that. "I'll be outside."

Which was _not _where the other children where, and where she rightfully should be -- the dojo floor needed scrubbing and the whole pack of them were supposed to be doing it before bed as Kaoru had classes early in the morning. He nodded, though, and said, "Go on."

"She's ... not doing well," Kaoru said softly.

"Aa. She killed a man. And that one is no killer -- it will weigh heavily on her soul." He paused, then added, "Kaoru, she needs a weapon," he said, intending to bring up the subject of _buying _one. Swords weren't cheap, and they might need to take out a loan to do it. But bamboo shinai were _not _going to be suitable for Chiyoko in the future -- and he figured she needed to start training with live steel now.

_I do not want to train this little girl to kill. But she will die if I do not. _It wasn't really that hard of a decision; Chiyoko was _likely _to find herself in fights to the death. She needed to be prepared.

_And any man who attacks a four and a half foot tall little girl simply because he wants her Quickening deserves what he gets, _Kenshin thought, with a hint of bitterness.

"Give her my father's wakizashi," Kaoru said, slowly, but something in her tone said she had been thinking about it already. She continued, "She's too short for a proper katana and it's a longer blade. It's about the right length for her. It'll work if ... well, you know. If she has enough momentum and accuracy it's a heavy enough of a weapon to work for what she needs it to do." _Take somebody's head off_. Apparently, Kaoru found the concept of Chiyoko beheading someone as unpalatable as Kenshin did.

He simply nodded heavily. He knew the weapon -- it was stored in a trunk in the loft over Kenji's studio. It was a nice blade, well balanced, and well constructed. It would do -- particularly given that it was Kaoru's father's weapon, and would have some symbolism for Chiyoko. _She is our daughter; that may not have been what Saito intended when he brought her here, but Kaoru feels the same as I do. It is fitting that she inherits Kaoru's father's blade. _

"Kenshin," Kaoru said, "she's seen one family killed before her eyes. We're all she has."

_Oh, _Kenshin realized, blinking. _That would explain why she attacked as she did. She was defending me, not herself. She's just so wary towards me -- does she really consider me family?_

Now he felt guilty, a little -- not for the unnamed and unmourned swordsman, who, after all, had started the fight. But Chiyoko should not have had to defend him.

_Maybe I should carry a weapon again_ ... he sighed a silent sigh, too soft to carry to Kaoru's ears. She didn't need to know just how worried and upset he was ... However, he didn't want to ask Yahiko for the sakabatou back; it just felt wrong. _I might have another one made ... I'll talk to Kaoru about our finances later. Or I might find an iaito -- if I can find a decent used training sword, it won't be that much different than fighting with a sakabatou. I just won't have a sharp edge on the sword at all. _

Iaito didn't generally have the quality that he needed.

"Kenshin?" Kaoru said, "You okay?"

"Aa. Just thinking." He reached out, squeezed her shoulder briefly, and said, "I'm going to go get that wakizashi and have a talk with Chiyoko."

-----------------------------------

Chiyoko was seated on the steps; she was sitting perfectly motionless, arms around her legs, and staring into the darkness of a moonless night. Kenshin watched her for a moment, trying to judge her mood. He couldn't tell what was going on in her head; she was always reserved, but at the moment, she was as still as a marble statue. And there wasn't any expression at all on her face.

He sighed. _I wonder if she's not still in shock ... _He walked across the yard and sat down next to her. "Chi-chan, you know that I wasn't much younger than you when I killed my first man."

"I'd do it again," she said, sounding surprisingly defiant. Of course, she doubtless knew about his views on killing.

"I'm not saying you were wrong to do what you did," Kenshin said, quietly. "You haven't the skills to reliably disable a man without killing him."

"I _killed _a man." Chiyoko gave him a level brown-eyed gaze that was unsettling in its intensity. "It's wrong. _You _teach us that."

He sighed, set the wakazashi down on the steps, then settled down a few feet away. "Chi-chan, he would have killed me -- permanently -- and then likely you. And then Kaoru, as a witness. I cannot say that what you did was evil. It's not the best solution, but it wasn't a wrong one, either."

"So it's okay for me to kill," she snorted, calling him on the apparent hypocrisy. He gave her a surprised look in response to the sarcasm in her voice. It was mild, but it was definitely there. He wondered, not for the first time, what went on in her head -- somehow, he suspected there was a _lot _more going on in her head than meek submission and thoughtless obedience..

"Do you want to die?" He asked, softly.

"No!"

He huffed a sigh, and tried to explain his position. He wasn't sure he was doing a very good job, but he had to try to make her understand. "Chiyoko, I'm willing to die rather than to kill again. It's ... atonement. A price, for the crimes I've committed in my life." He sighed, giving up -- he was unable to fully explain his motivations in words. "Chiyoko, it hurts, doesn't it? Killing that man ... even if he was evil, it hurts your soul. I know it does."

"Aa." She was silent, for a moment, then added, "Kenshin, when he died ... the Quickening ... I _saw _things. You're right was an evil man, Kenshin. I got ... some of his memories ... some of his knowledge ... he was a bad man. I'm not really sorry he's dead." She ran a hand over her hair and confessed, "But I'm confused."

"Mm." He reached down and picked the wakazashi up and gravely handed it to her. "For some questions, there aren't any right answers, you know. -- Chiyoko, that's Kaoru's father's blade. She wants you to have it."

"I ..." She drew the short sword from its sheath. "... I'll thank her."

"Hai. Thank her by carrying it with you wherever you go."

She frowned at it for a moment, eyes gone distant and vague. He wondered what she was thinking, or perhaps remembering. Then she slipped the harness over her shoulders ... and to his surprise, the sword disappeared. He knew it was there, but he couldn't seem to _see _it. She gave him a small, tight-lipped smile that had no humor in it.

_She got power from that man she killed_, he realized. _She can do the invisible-sword thing now. Handy trick, that. _

"I need more training," she said, so softly he could barely hear her. They were words he'd never expected Chiyoko to say. She'd always been a reluctant if obedient student. "I don't want to die." She exhaled a deep, shuddering breath. "Kenshin-papa, I got _lucky_. I saw ... that man, he was hired ... I saw ... he took a lot of money to kill you ... I don't know who hired him."

Kenshin gave her a startled look. "You saw that?"

A shrug was her only response. "I think so. They're not _my _memories. I just see images, you know? There's no _context _for the images."

He ran a hand over his face, wondering who would have sent another Immortal after him. He had so many enemies it could have even been sheer dumb luck -- of the best swordsmen in the word, he suspected a small but not insignificant percentage of them might be Immortals from a few things that Connor and Marshall had told him. And anyone who knew him and wanted him dead would hire someone skilled.

On the other hand, Marshall could be playing games. Or the man who'd tried to kill him a few years back ... he never had heard what had happened to the man, though he had his suspicions in the form of a certain ruthless police officer who believed in killing evil swiftly. He just couldn't prove it, and, in truth, he really didn't want to know. In any event, however, he believed that Marshall was most likely behind the attack -- it was the simplest explanation, and the least improbable..

The problem with thinking of Marshall as the culprit was that Marshall had no motive that Kenshin could discern for wanting Kenshin dead other than taking Kenshin's Quickening. Was there something he was missing? Perhaps something with Jessica and Kenji?

If Marshall had a problem with Kenji, Kenshin would have thought that Marshall would have had the -- what, assassin? -- go after Kenji, not Kenshin. What would be the point of killing Kenshin?

_Maybe, _Kenshin thought with the blackest of humor, _The guy got our names confused. _

"Kenshin?"

"Sorry, Chi-chan," he reached a hand out and ruffled her hair. "I'm just thinking dark thoughts. I can see another Immortal wanting our Quickenings, but I can't figure out who would hire him to do it. Are you sure?"

"No," she sighed. "It's all a jumble ..." she bit her lip, then added, "Though I think I speak English now."

He snorted a surprised laugh at that. "Heh. Fringe benefit, eh?"

That earned him a short bark of a laugh from her. "People want me dead, I'll never look older than fourteen or be taller than a child, and I had to kill a man today. But now I speak English and that makes up for everything."

He smiled at the snark in her voice -- if anything, that uncharacteristic display of humor reassured him that she was going to be okay. She was a tough kid -- sometimes, the quiet ones were.

_Tomoe had the same sort of reserved silence, _he remembered, making the connection for the first time. Chi-chan reminded him of her, a bit; they had the same sort of quiet grace and underlying steel -- though he'd _not _recognized Chiyoko's inner strength until now.

"C'mon, Chiyoko," he stood up, and offered her a hand up. "Follow me."

"Where are we going?" She fell into step beside him.

"Dojo."

"It's late ..."

"The kids should be done by now," he said offhandedly, and that proved to be the case when he pushed the door open. Inside the dojo, the air smelled of soapy water and floor was a little damp in places, but the younger children were gone. They would have the room to themselves.

"Kenshin-papa?"

He ignored the query in her voice for a second as he bolted the doors from the inside. There would be no witnesses for the moves he was going to teach her; no little eyes spying through a barely cracked door. Once the dojo was secure he turned to her and said very seriously, "I'll teach you, Chiyoko. I swore once that Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu would die with me. But ..." He regarded her seriously. "I consider you my daughter, Chi-chan. I cannot in good conscience _not _teach you this."

"You've never taught Yahiko. Or Kenji," she said, warily.

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Yahiko is Kaoru's student. He's done well with the Kamiya style; there was no need for me to teach him anything more than what he could learn by observing me. And Kenji doesn't need it, and he frankly doesn't have the speed or agility to master the techniques I will teach you. And he's too big. He would injure himself, eventually -- a bad landing or a fall."

She nodded, accepting that explanation.

"So. Show me the katas Kenji's taught you so far ..." he said, lowering himself to sit crosslegged on a tatami mat by the wall. He watched with critical eyes, silent, as she moved through the first steps.

There was a new confidence in her steps; a certainty that had never been there before. And, hidden by her longstanding reticence was real skill. Speed, accuracy, agility. Skill. He was both surprised and reassured. For the first time he thought that Chiyoko might do okay in a world that was going to be unfairly harsh to her.

_I never thought I'd take a student, _he thought, _but I'm not sorry I am. This feels ... right. She may kill someday, using what I teach her ... but I do not believe she will ever abuse what she learns from me. And were she to die at the hands of another Immortal because I did _not _teach her ... that would be another stain on my soul._


	31. Chapter 31

Chapter 31

-----------------

"Like this," Kenshin said, demonstrating a battoujitsu move in _very _slow motion. Two weeks of daily training with him had given Kenshin some real hope that Chiyoko _could _become good enough to credibly defend herself. Behind that quiet exterior was a sharp mind, and though short, she was becoming more and more athletic with each passing day.

She still lacked aggression in training. He trusted that would _not _be a problem in an actual fight.

Chiyoko watched him closely, then mimicked his moves, ending the exercise by solidly striking her sword against a wooden post in the courtyard.

"Keep your elbow a little closer to your chest," he said, watching her critically. "And -- your hand should be twisted a little. Like this." He adjusted her grip.

She tried again, with better form. _Step, draw, strike. Step, draw, strike. _She was taking chunks of wood out of the post with each blow -- he gave her a few months before she'd be able to cut the post in half with one cut.

"What's the flaw in this attack?" he asked, quietly.

She stopped practicing before answering.

"Keep going," he said, firmly. He wanted her to internalize the motions until she could literally fight in her sleep, while drunk, while ready to drop from exhaustion, when wounded, when so sick she couldn't see straight -- in short, he wanted everything he taught her it to be reflex that didn't require coherency. He figured the best way to get her to learn everything to the point of pure instinct was to make her think of _other _things while doing that.

_Step, draw, _"I'm vulnerable," _strike_, "when," _step, draw, _"I'm extended out," _strike_, "Like this."

"Good." He hadn't told her that. He hadn't _had _to -- she'd practiced the same moves against him with a bokken (he didn't yet trust her with steel in a sparring match) and he'd routinely and soundly swatted her until she _knew _she was vulnerable right after the strike. Cruel, yes, but it was a good way to make her remember ... now he understood why Hiko had left him with so many bruises when he was younger than Chiyoko. "Ideally, you're going to be faster than almost all the swordsmen you face. You'll cripple or," he hated to say it, but he _was _teaching her to fight to the death, "kill your opponent with one blow."

She gave him a cautious look over her shoulder without breaking her rhythm of _step, draw, strike_. She knew how much he disapproved of killing. But he couldn't help but think that anyone who tried to take the head of a four and a half foot tall little girl and _lost _to selfsame little girl deserved what they got. He couldn't guarantee she'd win -- but he could give her the skills she needed to hold her own.

"What if I don't kill them on the first blow?"

He tossed her the sword's sheath. "I'm going to teach you the next step today."

Shortly, he had her going through slow-motion _step, draw, strike_ with the sword, and then with the sheath, _block _at an imaginary blow from an enemy's swordwhich gave her time to bring her sword back to cover herself, and then with the sword, _strike_ again. The post was looking pretty battered by the time he called it quits for the afternoon. "Go chop wood for an hour, and then hit the bath," he told her.

She groaned, comically, but didn't complain. One good fight in which it was kill-or-die had motivated her quite well to build the level of fitness she would need to _win._

"Here, leave me that," he held his hand out for the wakazashi. She lifted an eyebrow but passed it over.

"Gonna kill the post?"

"Mmph." He still hadn't found a suitable iaito or sakabatou for himself -- he _had _a cheap iaito that he figured might last five minutes in a real fight, but which was better than nothing. It had lousy balance, was made of very poor metal,, and he hated to practice with it. Kaoru mockingly called it his _fake sword_.

Two deaths in a few years had made him decide that he _did _need to carry a weapon again. He just hadn't found one he liked and that was in keeping with the spirit of his oath never to kill. Still, he had no problem with practicing with a 'real' sword -- it wasn't like the post was alive to 'kill' -- and several years of _not _fighting had rendered him almost as woefully out of shape as the gently raised Chiyoko had been.

"Go chop wood," he told her again.

"Aw, I wanna watch ..."

"I'm _not _showing off."

"Kenshin-papa ..." _That _was a whine.

He shook his head, giving in. She would learn by observation, too. "We just need a new post ..." he assumed a battoujitsu stance, then applied Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu to the post. With one swift strike he neatly severed the post an inch from the ground, then sliced it in half again before it hit the ground. The post hadn't stood a chance. "Chop that up, too, since you didn't listen to me."

She laughed, grinned, and picked the two pieces up and hauled them off in the direction of the wood pile. He added, "And ... when you're done there, take Iku and Aki and go down to the river and cut some new logs. And take your wakazashi when you go."

"Then take a bath?" She asked, hopefully.

He snorted. "Please. You smell like a horse, not a girl."

"Neigh!" She responded playfully, grinning, before scampering off in the direction of the firewood.

Kaoru was watching, he realized, when he turned towards the dojo. He padded over to her, and sat down on the steps with a satisfied sigh. "She's coming along."

"So I see." Kaoru grinned. "She does look good. And she's smiling more."

"Mph. She _has _to be good, Kaoru. It's going to be that or die. We all know that. No illusions, not anymore."

Her hand stroked his hair; he leaned into the casually affectionate gesture, enjoying the contact. She said, "Shinya said he might have found a good katana for you, for a price we could afford."

"Katana? No." Kenshin shook his head, denying that suggestion.

"You ... you could always fight with it reversed."

"The balance would be wrong." He sighed. _And it wouldn't feel right._

"It'd be better than nothing. Or you could swap swords with Yahiko. He's already said he wants to give you the sakabatou back -- neither of you knew you were an Immortal when you gave it to him. There would be no dishonor in an honest trade, Kenshin."

"No," he repeated, firmly. "The sakabatou is rightfully his. I'll find something, Kaoru."

"What if we were to dull the edge of a regular katana?" she suggested.

"It would weaken it. It might break in a battle."

The hand on his hair suddenly pulled away. She dealt him a sharp smack to the side of the head.

"Ow! Kaoru, what was ..."

"Kenshin Himura, you _idiot_." He heard tears in her voice. "You are an _idiot. _If anything happens to you, I don't know how I'll go on! I _need _you. We've six kids to feed and care for, and a dojo to run, and friends who need us, and your damned oath is going to get you killed and then where will we be?" She turned, hiccupped, and ran inside.

He sighed, got up, followed.

She wasn't done with him, of course. She'd only gone as far as the kitchen, where he found her furiously peeling carrots. "Kaoru-dono ..."

"_Don't _..."

"This one is an idiot."

"Don't play games with me, Kenshin," she pointed at him with a carrot. "_Get _a sword. You don't have to kill with it, but you have to _carry _it. You are _more _than good enough to _not _kill in a fight if you chose to. And you could kill someone with the dull side of a sakabatou if you wanted -- so could I, frankly. So don't tell me you carry it because you _can't _kill with it. It's just a symbol and if you love us, you will lose the damned idealism for once."

He sighed. She was right ... on many levels, she was _right_. He wasn't a wanderer anymore, without responsibilities. He had children, friends, a wife ... and he knew it. "There's a swordsmaker I've heard of, in Kyoto -- the grandson of the man who made my original sakabatou. If you can spare me for a few weeks, I'll go and have him make me a sword." _And I suppose we can take a loan out for the money._

"_Yes_, I can spare you. Iku and Aki can handle the chores for a few weeks. _Go_. And given you saved the brat's life when he was in knappies, maybe he'll give you a good deal!"

_Heh. She's heard of him too, then, and made the connection. _

"And take Chiyoko. She could use some exposure to the wider world," Kaoru said, still sounding miffed at him.

"Aa, Kaoru. You're right. This one is an idiot."

"Don't 'this one' me, Kenshin Himura," she waved the kitchen knife she was using on the carrots at him. "Don't call me _dono_. Just _do _it. I don't want to lose you. I _can't_. It-it would destroy me."

He sighed, walked over, took the knife from her hand, set it down on the counter, and then hugged her. She was stiff for a moment, then abruptly wrapped her arms around him in a ferociously desperate embrace. "I just don't want to _lose _you again."

"You won't. I swear to you, Kaoru."

Her arms held him tightly, and she said very quietly, "I'll hold you to that, or I'll hunt you down through heaven and hell itself if I have to."

He snorted. "You would, too."

-----------------------


	32. Chapter 32

Chapter 32

-------------------

"A daughter!" Sanosuke grabbed Kenshin by the arms and shook him. "I've got a little girl!"

Kenshin suffered himself to be shook; in truth, he was grinning too. "Oroo. You're in trouble now, my friend!"

"She's _perfect_!" Sanosuke let go of Kenshin, and punched a fist into the air. Then he whirled to the bassinet behind him, and picked the child up, and cradled her to his chest. "She's absolutely perfect. And Megumi looks so happy! I can't believe I'm a father, I can't!"

Megumi -- who was already back to work in the clinic -- had, indeed, looked happy, if very tired, when Kenshin had seen her earlier. The little girl was barely three days old. But the patients kept coming and someone had to care for them ...

Kenshin snorted a laugh at Sanosuke's expression; he was looking down at the child in his arms, and somehow, his smile was softer, gentler, than Kenshin had ever seen before. "I can. And welcome to the club."

"Wanna hold her?" Sanosuke almost shyly offered the child to Kenshin -- who accepted without hesitation.

"Aa. She's a perfect one, that she is," Kenshin expertly held the child to his chest, brushing thick black curls from her forehead. Then he paused as a strange look of concentration crossed the baby's face. Kenshin said evilly, "Oh, Sano my friend, want me to teach you how to change a diaper?"

Sanosuke's smile failed him. He looked down at Kenshin, who looked back up at him with innocent lavender eyes. Mirth at Sanosuke's expense lurked there, though Kenshin's expression was perfectly tranquil -- Sanosuke had known the man more than long enough to understand his sense of humor.

"Oh no ..." Sano held his hands up, expression going from 'doting father' to 'panicked man' in half a heartbeat.

"Oh, _yes_," Kenshin grabbed Sanosuke's elbow with his free hand and propelled him back towards the bassinet. "Your baby, you change her. Megumi's busy with that kid with the broken arm."

"But ... but ..." Megumi truly _was _busy; Sanosuke knew it. "Couldn't you ... you know a lot more about kids than I ..."

Kenshin's grin was positively evil. His amusement had reached the surface, which meant trouble for Sanosuke.

"Crap." Sanosuke sighed, seeing no escape.

"By the smell, likely." Kenshin snickered.


	33. Chapter 33

Chapter 33

---------------------

Raiko's hair smelled of baby: clean, new, fresh. Sanosuke lay sprawled on the grass by the river, his daughter on his chest, a fishing pole in one hand, her head tucked under his chin. She was asleep, breath whispering against his shoulder.

He was praying the fish didn't bite, because if they did, he was just going to have to let them go. He wasn't _about _to wake her by landing the fish. At two months, Raiko didn't sleep much -- Megumi swore that the fact the kid napped _maybe _three hours a day total meant she'd be a genius when she was grown. Sanosuke, at this point, was perfectly willing to accept an _average _child if it meant he could catch a few extra moments of sleep.

And the hustle and bustle of the clinic meant Raiko didn't sleep at all during the day -- the moment someone so much as sneezed anywhere in the building, she'd be awake and, usually, crying. Hence, he'd been banished by Megumi to a quiet spot beside the river to try to get her to relax and nap.

_Megumi has it harder_, he thought, ruefully. Megumi had to wake and _feed _their daughter a couple times a night. Though he did do his fair share of pacing the floor with a colicky baby for hours at a time -- Megumi had work to do, and he frankly didn't -- at least, not the important work that Megumi did -- so if the problem wasn't hunger, Sanosuke was willing to handle the job of soothing the child. If she could be soothed. And often, she couldn't ... and when she bawled and bawled for hours on end, he wanted to cry with her. It was just so frustrating, sometimes, to not be able to _do _anything.

_Megumi says things will get better. _

He sighed silently, trying not to move and wake her. He was so tired ... he carefully rested one hand on her back, so he'd be sure to wake if she did, and let his eyes slip closed. The air was warm, and smelled of grass and growing things. There was enough of a breeze to keep the mosquitoes away, and the fish weren't biting, and he was so drowsy ... he decided to steal a bit of sleep while he could, while the baby slept.

_Love her ... _he thought, muzzily. _My daughter. She's going to grow tall and strong ... she'll be tough, like Megumi and Kaoru and Misao ... I'm not raising no delicate little flower ... I want her to be able to stand up for herself, and think for herself, and have the education I never had 'cause of the fighting ... she'll be a physician like Megumi, unless she wants to be something else ... get Kaoru to teach her to fight 'cause she's gonna be so pretty she'll need to beat the guys off with a shinai ..._

Times were changing. He saw so much _opportunity _for his daughter in the future.

He had almost drifted off to sleep to daydreams of his daughter, in her teens, tough enough to fight off any boys who'd dare threaten her, but drop-dead gorgeous like her mother. Unexpectedly, a shadow falling across his face made him start -- and the motion promptly woke Raiko, who hiccupped out an experimental cry.

"Shhhh," he said, quietly, sitting up. The shadow belonged to Kenshin, who gave him a very apologetic smile.

"Sorry, Sano," Kenshin sat down beside him, shifting the iaito he'd taken to carrying out of his way with one hand as he did. "I wanted to see you alone before I leave tomorrow." Kenshin and Chiyoko were going to Kyoto, leaving in the morning on a steamer.

Sanosuke sat up, holding his daughter to his chest; she whimpered, apparently working her way up towards a good howling fit. As per usual.

Kenshin winced at the noises the baby was making. "Sorry. I didn't intend to wake her."

"Ah, it's not you. She's just a cranky baby." Sanosuke yawned. He was so damned tired. "Megumi thinks she'll grow out of it. I hope so ... I have this vision of her grown up and it's not pleasant, otherwise."

Kenshin snorted a laugh and held his hands out, and Sanosuke willingly passed the infant over. She immediately quieted and snuggled into Kenshin's shoulder, tiny fists clutching his hair and yukata.

Sanosuke eyed him suspiciously for a moment. "You are disgusting, you know? And can I borrow you when it's two hours after midnight and the kid is still screaming and we can't figure out _why_?"

"Only if you'll come over when all six of mine have stomach flu," Kenshin sighed, sounding moderately exasperated.

"Five. Chiyoko doesn't get sick." Sanosuke pointed out with a teasing grin

"Oh, yeah, she does. Sympathetic vomiting, when she sees someone else urp. It's great fun when they're all doing it and you have more children sick than you own buckets." Kenshin's grin was sardonic; Sanosuke thought he vaguely remembered Megumi saying something about all of the Himuras being ill with a puking bug two weeks before. "Chiyoko's a tough kid but she definitely has a wimpy stomach. -- And anyway, the six included Kenji. Who was sick enough to actually need us."

Sano winced. "I'll stick with the diapers, thanks."

"Heh." Raiko made a pleased mewing noise when he stroked her small back with a callused hand. "Smart choice."

"Mm. So, you leave tomorrow ..."

"Aa, I leave tomorrow." Kenshin sighed heavily. "Do you know that this is the first time Kaoru and I have been apart since ..." He trailed off, for a moment, then said sturdily, "Since Enishi kidnapped her."

"Whew. That was a long time ago." Sanosuke sat forward, elbows on his knees. "Are you worried about her?"

Kenshin shrugged the one shoulder that wasn't weighed down with Raiko. "This one thinks Kaoru can handle most ordinary problems, but ..."

"... you still have enemies." Sanosuke concluded, when Kenshin turned silent, violet eyes searching Sanosuke's face. He hadn't missed the _sesshou _pronoun that Kenshin frankly didn't use much anymore; Kenshin mostly talked like an ordinary guy these days.

_He's healed, _Sanosuke thought, _To some extent. He's changed quite a bit from the man I knew so long ago. He'd deny it if you told him, but the man I knew then was consciously and unconsciously punishing himself for the crimes he'd committed ... I think the first step towards true healing for him was marrying Kaoru. And then adopting Kenji, and then seeing the dojo flourish. And watching all of us prosper around him, and being included in our lives as just one of the gang. Adopting Chiyoko and the Himura kids ... it's all been so good for him.  
_

Kenshin was just _calmer _these days -- more confident in himself, too, and quicker to laugh and joke. Slowly, he'd dropped the affected humility in his speech patterns; Sanosuke wasn't even sure he was aware had done so, and decided not to point out the use of the _sesshou _word.

"Aa," he frowned. "Although, this one thinks that any enemies I had remaining from the past would have sought me out by now. This one is far more concerned about other people."

"You're aware of what they're saying about you, then," Sano said, sadly. Since Kenshin had been so publicly killed a few months ago, the rumors had gotten more brutal. One of Kaoru's students had died of a fever two weeks before -- just an unfortunate childhood illness -- and there was a vicious bit of gossip going around that the Himuras stole the souls of their students to maintain Kenshin's youthful appearance.

A significant number of Kaoru's students had quit the school; as far as Sano could tell, most people didn't actually _believe _the rumor, but doubts were growing. He had an ominously forbidding feeling about the Kamiya dojo's future.

"It would be hard to miss. The children ..." Kenshin sighed heavily. "Nothing is ever said to my face. I frighten people too much. But to my family, yes, things are said. And they tell me. Chiyoko, Kenji and Iku were pelted with offal when they walked home from the market last week ... some men followed Kaoru in the market last month, saying terrible things until Katsu and a couple others overheard and intervened ... I am worried, Sano. I truly am."

"I'll look out for the missy. Of _course _I will. You needn't even ask."

"Thank you," Kenshin said, quietly. "I doubt anything will happen -- but I would be loathe to be wrong."

"Was planning on checking on her regularly anyway," he said, with a sigh.

"You're worried too," Kenshin gave his friend an oblique violet-eyed look. "I'm not so concerned that I won't go to Kyoto, but I worry." He rested his free hand on the hilt of the iaito and said, with a contemptuous snort, "This is a relatively useless weapon. It will break the moment it meets a fight. I _need _to get a decent sword again."

"I don't see why you don't ask Yahiko for the sakabato back," Sanosuke said, with a frustrated growl. "Then you wouldn't _have _to go to Kyoto ..."

Kenshin was silent for a long moment. "Then what weapon would that leave Yahiko with?" He lifted his shoulder up in half a shrug again. "Yahiko and Tae will be staying at the dojo while I'm gone. I trust them to protect my family as well as I trust you. But ..."

_Yahiko has work to do, _Sanosuke finished that sentence in his head. The defiant little boy they'd both known had grown up into a widely respected man -- Yahiko was working as a bodyguard these days for rich and powerful men in the government. _It is entirely possible, if trouble comes, it will be when Yahiko is away at some function. _

"We'll work together, Kenshin. Don't worry."

Raiko hiccupped and whimpered. Kenshin smiled fondly, "I think your little girl's missing her mommy. Why don't you take her back? Chiyoko and I will stop by the clinic tomorrow before we leave."

"Aa. Megumi has some medicines she wants to send with you, anyway." Sanosuke cradled Raiko in his arms, and quieted her by letting her suck on his fingers. "I'll see you in the morning, then, my friend."


	34. Chapter 34

Chapter 34

------------

_That looks like Kenshin's hair_, Aoshi thought, idly, spotting the pony-tailed figure from behind. The man was dressed in bright blue hakama and a white kimono -- it was a better clothing than he was used to seeing Kenshin in, but they were definitely his style.

His hair, though it was the right length and color, was also a little different -- it was shinier, healthier, less shaggy. He'd been taking better care of it, and it flowed loosely in a silky length that was neatly trimmed at the ends and held back with a silver clasp. He remembered that Kenshin used to hack off the ends with a knife when it got too long for convenience, then simply tie it back with a bit of whatever string he could find to keep it out of his eyes.

_Yeah, that's him_, Aoshi decided, lengthening his stride to catch up. Even from behind, and half a block away, Kenshin was unmistakable. He ignored the pain in his hips and back; it was a constant companion these days.

Kenshin paused at a stand selling fruit, giving Aoshi a chance to approach him without breaking into an undignified limping run, or shouting.

He was accompanied by a girl -- for a moment, Aoshi wondered if she was a girlfriend or wife, but he would have heard if anything had happened to Kaoru, and he couldn't picture Kenshin cheating on the Kamiya woman. Those two were very deeply in love and utterly dedicated to each other.

Anyway, when the girl turned a bit, and when he saw her face in profile, he realized she was far too young for him. A young teenager, at best -- she had the face of a child. And she was dressed in boy's clothing -- hakama and a kimono like Kenshin's, though Aoshi realized as he drew closer that she'd embroidered flowers on the sleeves of the man's kimono and down the legs of her hakama.

_She's a fighter, _he realized. _That stance is unmistakable. She moves like Kenshin does, or like Hiko used to. Very interesting ... and she's got a wakazashi at her waist. As short as she is, she'd _trip _over a full length katana. And the wakazashi is just short enough for her to legally carry. _

A woman who fought couldn't wear a kimono; it was too restraining. Misao's solution had been that itty-bitty skirt she'd worn so long ago, and trousers now. But if this girl was trained to fight with a sword like Kenshin, she'd find hakama valuable because they'd hide her footwork in a battle. Obviously, however, she wanted to be seen as a _girl _- hence, the embroidery. _Odd_, Aoshi thouhght, _Most female blades I've known have tried very hard to look like boys. Except for Misao. Who's just Misao and a law unto herself._

"Himura-san!" He said, when he was close enough to speak normally.

Kenshin turned, and a sunny grin broke across his features. "Aoshi-san! Hello!"

"It's been a long time," Aoshi said -- and Kenshin didn't look a bit different, but then, Kaoru had warned them about that in her letters. "What, seven years?"

"Hai. It is good to find you well, Aoshi-san," Kenshin said, gravely. Concern flickered in his eyes, though Aoshi wasn't sure why. "This is my daughter, Chiyoko."

"I didn't know you had a daughter." Aoshi tilted his head, regarding the girl again. They looked nothing alike, except that both were, of course, painfully short. Chiyoko was a solid girl, though -- short and stout, with well-developed muscles and callused fingers.

"She's mine in all but blood," Kenshin said, gravely. He rested a hand on Chiyoko's shoulder, "My apprentice, also."

"A girl?"

"Hai." Kenshin agreed. Aoshi figured there was a story there, but he wasn't going to ask. Maybe Kenshin would volunteer it later, maybe not. Misao would likely find out and tell him eventually.

The girl was silent, simply watching him with wary brown eyes. A quiet one, then; there was impressive calm in her brown eyes.

"Does Hiko know?"

"I plan to visit him this afternoon, but I'd hoped to get a room at the Aoiya first, if you'll have us," Kenshin said, politely, and a little warily. Aoshi wondered why he was being so cautious. Had something happened?

"You're not in any trouble, are you?" Aoshi asked, bluntly.

Kenshin blinked and grimaced in reaction to that. "No. Not official trouble, anyway. Because of what I look like ..." he gestured at his youthful features, "Some claim I'm a demon, or a sorcerer. It's been getting worse, lately ... we ran into a man who remembered me from the Bakumatsu on the way out here, and he thought I was a vengeful spirit."

"Fools," Aoshi snorted. Kenshin was many things, including, quite possibly, cursed; he'd never been _vengeful_, however, even during the darkest days of his past. At any rate, Aoshi figured he knew Kenshin -- you leaned more about the character of a man when you called him 'enemy' than when you called him 'friend' -- Aoshi figured whatever else Kenshin was, he wasn't a threat to anyone Aoshi cared about. He said calmly, "Yes, you're certainly welcome."

"Mm. Thank you, then." Kenshin looked _much _happier, and Aoshi realized he'd simply been worried about the reception he would meet.

-------------

Kenshin heard Misao before they saw her -- shrieking laughter, a yell of indignation, an, "I'm going to _get _you, you _brat_!" rang from inside the Aoiya.

Chiyoko, next to him, stopped short in surprise at the noise. Foot traffic on the street it front of them swirled around them. Aoshi didn't even blink, however; it would take more than Misao shouting at, presumably, one of her children to unsettle _him_. Kenshin just shook his head, and followed Aoshi into the building. He was privately looking forward to watching his quiet, reserved daughter have to deal with Aoshi and Misao's children -- the thought amused him.

_Misao sounds remarkably like Kaoru yelling at Yahiko. I almost miss those battles._

"Misao! We've guests!" Aoshi shouted.

"Oooh! You're _so _dead, you little monkey-boy!" Misao's voice carried to them. Then she added, for their benefit, "Coming, coming!"

The boy in question appeared first: perhaps six or seven years old, with enormous brown eyes, an impish grin, and way too much energy. He skidded to a halt in front of Kenshin, declared, "Like your hair, Mister, can I touch it?" and promptly extended a hand up.

"Ari!" Aoshi scolded, "Where are your manners?"

"I lost 'em," was the instant rejoinder from the boy.

Kenshin smiled, crouched down on one knee, and flipped his ponytail over his shoulder. "It's okay, Aoshi-san."

The boy patted the hair and said, "It's cool. I want hair like that when I grow up!" Fingers -- which were sticky with some substance that smelled sugary -- poked his cheek next. "Like your scar, too. Makes you look tough. Grrrrrr! What's your name, mister?"

"Kenshin ..."

"Himura!" Misao shrieked, making her son jump in surprise. She'd hit a possibly higher note than before. He stood up just in time to be tackled in an ecstatic hug. After nearly cracking his ribs, she released him, favored him with an enormous grin, and declared, "You look wonderful!"

He could say the same about her -- she was at least forty, but as tomboyishly athletic as she had been at sixteen. Her braid was laced through with large amounts of silver and grey, and she had wrinkles about her eyes and mouth, but she was still _Misao_. As contrasted with Aoshi who -- and here Kenshin shot him a covert look -- was looking _old _these days. His shoulders were bent, and deep lines surrounded his eyes. He was balding, and he moved as if something hurt -- hips, probably. Aoshi wasn't going to grow old with grace, Kenshin thought sadly.

"Himura?" Misao had picked up his turn of mood. She gave him a questioning mood.

"You two look wonderful," he half-lied. "It's been a long time."

"Indeed it has, Himura!" She turned her attention to Chiyoko. "Is this the daughter that Kaoru mentioned in her letters, the one you adopted who's like you?"

"Hai. This is Chi-chan. Chiyoko, this is Misao, who is one of my oldest friends. And ..."

"Uncle Kenshin!" An excited voice exclaimed. He was tackled by a Misao-clone -- who'd been _nine_ the last time he'd been here, and was now sixteen. He remembered her as a giggly child who'd had a tremendous puppyish crush on Kenji, much to everyone's amusement -- except for Kenji. What was her name ... _Natsuki_, he recalled. Misao's third-oldest, she had two sisters who would now be eighteen and nineteen.

_She's Chiyoko's age. _Kenshin was suddenly struck by that. Natsuki was actually a year older than Chiyoko, and was the same age that Misao had been when they'd first met. Awkwardly, he returned the girl's hug.

Natuski giggled, "Kaoru said in her letter to Mama that you were coming! This is so cool!"

"Chi-chan, this is Natsuki." Kenshin extracted himself from the arms around his neck and caught Aoshi's epxression as he did so -- the ninja actually had a hint of a fond expression playing around his eyes, if not his mouth. Well, with kids like his, gaining the ability to smile was probably inevitable.

More children were piling in through the door -- he counted seven by the time every single kid, even the ones too young to remember him from his last visit, had greeted him with enthusiastic hugs. The older two were missing, probably moved out with families of their own started.

----------------

That afternoon, with Chiyoko in tow, he headed off to find Hiko. As it turned out, that wasn't difficult -- Hiko hadn't left his mountain for the last thirty years.

He found the man sitting on a log in front of his cabin, still wearing the same cloak or, more likely, a duplicate of it, but looking ... diminished. Smaller. Hair gone completely white and thinning, shoulders stooped, and he was too thin. Kenshin stopped short, cataloging the damage time had done to his master with some dismay.

He expected a sardonic comment, but none came. Surely, Hiko knew he was standing there ... finally, he cleared his throat. And yet still, no response came. He walked closer, half tempted to try to surprise Hiko with a swat from his iaito ... but the thought of what would happen if he succeeded stayed his hand. _If I can hit him, it means he has truly grown old. I do not want to find that is the case. And I do not wish to embarrass him._

Hiko was whittling on a bit of wood -- making a carving of a wolf, Kenshin saw. Only when Kenshin's shadow fell across the ground in front of him did he look up.

Opaque eyes squinted at him. Kenshin's heart flopped to his toes. Hiko was not blind, no, not yet. But soon. And there was an unhealthy cast to his skin. Kenshin speculated in his head, _Too much sake, not enough proper food. He hasn't anyone to cook for him, and I can personally attest to the fact that he'd rather not cook for himself -- I learned to cook out of self defense because he wasn't going to!_

"Well," the man said, rising stiffly, "If it isn't my wayward fool of an apprentice and his little wife. I'd recognize that red hair anywhere."

_Damn_, Kenshin thought, as Chiyoko made a startled but tiny noise. She looked up at him, obviously wondering how to handle this.

But Hiko squinted, then shook his head. "Too short. Not Kaoru. Who're you, girl?"

"This is my daughter, Hiko," Kenshin said. "Her name's Chiyoko."

"That boy of yours never mentioned a sister." Hiko grumbled. He squinted again. "She's got a sword. You teaching her to fight, boy?"

"She's ... I adopted her, a few years ago. She was orphaned." Kenshin said. "And yes, I'm teaching her. She's ..."

"Like you. One like you, yes, I can sense it now." Hiko snorted. This gave Kenshina bit of pause; _Sense it? He's not Immortal, but Hiko's always been a bit on the uncanny side. Maybe he can sense the ki of Immortals is different than the ki of mortals. Maybe he's always known I wasn't entirely normal. _

Hiko added, with a frown, "She's _short_."

"Not like I can exactly help that," Chiyoko responded, needled. Kenshin gave her a surprised look; as always, sharp retorts were unexpected coming from her. Chiyoko added, "And so's Kenshin-papa."

"He's got a good twenty more pounds over you, is a at least six inches taller, and has a great deal more upper body strength than you do, girl," Hiko replied, with an intense frown. "And still, there's things Kenshin can't do because he doesn't weigh enough. Like throw a good punch, or out-muscle almost any man if it comes down to a brute-force shoving match. The only reason he's still alive is that he keeps coming back from the dead."

"She hasn't a choice, Master Hiko," Kenshin said, quietly, putting a quelling hand on Chiyoko's shoulder. "She's like me, as you say. She has to learn. And she's fast -- she'll be faster than me with another year or two of training behind her."

"Mmm. You're going to get your heart broken, Kenshin. Best thing for her is to find her a man who _will _protect her." Hiko's words stunned Kenshin into silence.

"What man would have me?" Chiyoko snapped, bitterly. Hiko's words had obviously touched a raw nerve with her, just as they'd poked one of Kenshin's worst fears for Chiyoko squarely dead on. "I look like I'm _twelve_. And I'll _always _look this way. No man I'd want will ever want me! That's for sure." She turned on her heel and stalked off in the direction of the city, hand on the hilt of her wakizashi and back very, very straight.

"Damn you, Hiko," Kenshin growled, furious. "We came here to pay friendly respects. You're a nasty, bitter old man. You haven't changed a bit except to grow nastier and more bitter."

"I only said what needed to be said," Hiko said, mildly. "She seems like a good kid. She'll only die in the first battle she has with a serious opponent. Best you find her a nice samurai husband who'll treat her well."

"She _survived _her first battle," Kenshin hissed. "After the bastard killed me. _She _lived. Kaoru said she never hesitated, she just went for the kill, defending me and Kaoru"

"Mm." Hiko's rheumy, faded eyes blinked a couple of times. In a dry tone of voice, he said, "You lost. You've let yourself get soft, then. Never thought _you, _the Hitokiri Battousai, would have that problem."

Kenshin ran a hand over his face in exasperation. He was seriously regretting the impulse that had led him up to Hiko's mountain. In a clipped voice, he snapped, "I was unarmed, and the man was good. And I thought you didn't approve of the Battousai."

Hiko's expression softened suddenly. He heaved a sigh. "I was disappointed in the choices you made as a boy, Kenshin. I am proud of the man you have become." One corner of Hiko's mouth turned up in half a smile. "That son of yours, Kenji -- he's a tribute to you, to the man you are now. You can tell the worth of a man in the behavior of his children ... And it was a joy to have him here, those years you sent him to live with me ... You're right. I'm old, I'm bitter. But I'd have to be a fool to not recognize the good man you've become."

"Thank you," Kenshin said, at a loss for what else to say.

Hiko sighed heavily. "Don't thank me. I didn't do little Shinta any favors when I made him my apprentice. Though I wouldn't change anything if I had it to do over again, Kenshin -- because I didn't do Shinta any favors, but Kenshin has done a great deal of good in the world."

The old man -- and Kenshin realized he'd never think of him again as anything but an old man -- nodded in the direction that Chiyoko had stomped. "You'd better go after her now. And -- give this to your boy the next time you see him. It should fit _him, _at least. But tell him he doesn't have to wear it, just _keep _it for me."

Hiko shrugged out of his cloak and tossed it overhand to Kenshin. Kenshin caught it with one hand. "I will," he said, quietly, suddenly chilled to the marrow. _I won't ever see him again alive, _he thought, then dismissed that. _He's only twelve years older than I am. He's not _that _old._


	35. Chapter 35

Chapter 35

--------

Author's notes: I've been away because I decided to get off my butt and finish an original novel that's been sitting 2/3rds done on my hard drive for around four years. The novel was done in rough draft in about ten days, once I actually decided to do it ...

Regarding this chapter, I really don't like it chapter, but it had a few points in it that needed to be made to advance the story. The next chapter is going to be very tough to write ... you guys knew the rough stuff was coming, right? Sigh. This story's about Kenshin's journey from the rurouni of the series to the Immortal of the 21st century ... and not everything's fluffy and light during those years.

---------

Misao looked up from fixing a tear in one of her boys' yukatas as the shoji slid open. Chiyoko slipped through, head down; if she'd been a dog, Misao thought, her tail would have been between her legs.

"You any good at mending? Because I'm awful at it," Misao said, in a friendly tone of voice. She figured that whatever had happened, Chiyoko needed a distraction. Given where Himura and the kid had been headed, she had a pretty good idea of what 'whatever' might be, and Hiko was probably dead in the center of it.

_Only person I've ever known who ever got along with that man, _Misao thought, with some amusement and a little concern for Chiyoko, _Is Kenji. And that's because everyone not even Hiko is immune to Kenji's good cheer. _

She well remembered the two years that Kenji had spent with Hiko -- they'd seen more out of the cranky old hermit in those two years than they had in decades before. Hiko had often been _smiling _when the two had shown up for regular visits -- small smiles, but honest ones, often aimed at his artistic young apprentice. Weird. And when Kenji had gone home, they hadn't seen Hiko for years -- when she'd finally run into him in the market and more-or-less kidnapped him for dinner and a visit, Hiko had looked like he'd aged decades in a few years. _Too much drink_, Misao had thought then.

Chiyoko, who had apparently been planning to slip silently upstairs to her room, gave Misao a startled look. "Err," she said.

"Could use the help. Really. And you don't look you've got much to do." Misao, mother of nine, said in a bossy tone of voice that brooked no argument. Because Chiyoko really did look bad -- her mouth was set in a thin line and her eyes were puffy, like she'd been crying on the way home. Kenshin was nowhere in site, so Misao figured that Chiyoko had left him behind with Hiko.

Chiyoko forced a smile on her face and said, "I'm good at sewing."

"Oh, that's a relief. I usually have my eldest girl fix things but she's married now and the mending's been piling up." Misao pushed a basket of assorted sewing supplies towards Chiyoko as the girl knelt beside her. She'd suspected the girl _could _sew, since Misao knew for damn sure that Kaoru couldn't and, while Kenshin was impressively good at mending for a man, he likely hadn't done the fancy embroidery decorating his daughter's clothing. Misao herself had no patience and no talent for sewing and only did so when she had other no choice.

Chiyoko cautiously inspected the contents of the sewing basket, obviously wary of sharp objects -- it was, truthfully, a bit of a mess -- then selected a needle and some white thread. Without a word, she took the yukata from Misao's hands and frowned at it. She poked in the basket a bit more, found a tiny pair of scissors, and used them to rip out the rather inexpert seam Misao had been making.

"You're awfully quiet," Misao said, studying the girl's face. Chiyoko's smile had faded quietly. "Is something bugging you?"

"Nothing you did, Makimachi-san," Chiyoko ducked her head. "I like sewing. Thank you for asking me, actually. I need something to think about, besides ..." she trailed off.

Misao snorted. "You must get along well with that father of yours, then, if you like this sort of thing." She remembered the first time she'd seen Kenshin sew -- it had been one of _her _tunics, years ago, when Kenshin had been recovering from the battle with Shishio. He'd been hurting still, but healed enough to be bored and restless. After being scolded by Kaoru, Sanosuke _and _Megumi for walking around, he'd simply picked up her ripped top from a pile of laundry, produced a little leather case containing needle and thread from his tiny bag of belongings, and fixed it while she watched in amused astonishment. He hadn't said a word, just _done _it.

Kaoru had commented, with an amused laugh later, that, if Kenshin was sufficiently bored, he'd been known to do the laundry _twice_. The man did not like to be idle.

"He enjoys simple things that take his mind off other things, too." Chiyoko said, apparently by way of explanation of her foster-father's often unusual behavior. "Cleaning and mending and cooking let him focus, and distract him from troubling thoughts that he can do nothing about."

"He tell you that?" Misao regarded the girl with a bit of surprise.

Chiyoko shook her head. "It is obvious, ne?"

"Maybe. I always just assumed he was a neatnik and a bit ..." Misao shrugged helplessly. "A bit unique."

"Kaoru-mama, now ..." Chiyoko smiled faintly. "If she's worried, she challenges one of us to a sparring match. Last time was just before I left Tokyo. I beat her and she was delighted."

"You beat Kaoru?"

Chiyoko smiled. It was a quiet smile, with no element of bragging in it. It was simple pleasure in success. "I knocked her bokken out of her hands."

"Heh. I'll only be surprised the day you beat _Kenshin_." Misao snorted. "Kaoru's good, I'll grant you, though."

"I have to be ... effective." Chiyoko sighed. "People will come for my head. How much has Kenshin told you about us ... About Immortals?"

"Kaoru's told me some, in letters. I don't believe all of it," Misao snorted, "but some of it's _got _to be true. Kenshin doesn't look a day older than when we met. Younger, even, because he's less troubled. He smiles more, and laughs. And makes that goofy _orooo _noise all the time."

Chiyoko nodded. "He does look older when he's worrying, doesn't he? The cover story for the trip here was that he was my elder brother. We didn't think that anyone would believe 'father' who hadn't known him for years."

"Not sure they would believe 'brother' either, given his hair," Misao pointed out. She figured they were probably fortunate that Chiyoko looked younger than her actual age, or suspicions would have been raised that the two were running away with each other. Kenshin, in the right light, and the right mood, appeared no older than Chiyoko's fifteen -- though if you gave him something to worry about then the years piled on. Kenshin was living proof that you didn't need wrinkles to look old.

"We said he was adopted." Chiyoko grinned. Misao was relieved to see that expression; whatever Hiko had said had not been utterly horrible, then. "Then I picked a couple of mock fights with him so people would be sure to believe it. We were worried they'd get the wrong idea about us ... So we had a screaming fight on the deck about some boy I was supposed to like and that he didn't approve of ... plotting that was great fun. You know, Kenshin-papa can _act_. I think he missed his calling, really." She dimpled suddenly. "I can't believe he used to scare me."

Misao choked a laugh out. "I would have paid good money to see that."

"Well, I thought the funniest part was when some guy who'd known Kenshin during the Bakumatsu saw him during that fight. Kenshin was really getting into it -- y'know how his eyes turn colors when he's mad? He looked like _that _and he was stalking down the hall after me and I was shrieking insults at him -- and this guy steps out of a stairwell and sees Kenshin coming. He thought Kenshin was a vengeful spirit and nothing Kenshin-papa could say would convince him otherwise."

Misao snorted a laugh. Privately, she thought that Chiyoko could act too, if she could convincingly pull off a screaming-mad teenager , because Chiyoko had _far _too much natural dignity to indulge in that sort of behavior ordinarily. "What did Kenshin do?"

"Apologize. And then apologize some more." Chiyoko smiled. Then she sobered. "But I think it really hurt him. He didn't say anything about it to me, but ... well, he didn't clown around for days."

"Mm. It probably brought back memories he'd rather not remember," Misao said.

"Something I've wondered ... Makimachi-san, what was Kenshin like when he was younger?" Chiyoko asked.

Misao shrugged. "I never knew him as a hitokiri, Chiyoko-chan. I would have been four or five years old, and anyway, they kept his identity secret and he kept a low profile. And we weren't on the same side of the conflict. But I met him when I was sixteen and he was twenty-eight ... he was, I dunno, harder edged than he is now? More focused, anyway. And very ..., uh, very moral."

The explanation about _how _precisely she'd met Kenshin, Misao judged, would be better told to Chiyoko when she was sure none of her kids were sitting on the other side of a door and listening. They didn't need to know of their mother's attempt at banditry.

"I liked him, because Kenshin's impossible _not _to like. But I can tell you this -- the Kenshin I knew then wouldn't have clowned around with you and pretended to be your bossy big brother on a trip. And I can't imagine that Kenshin taking an apprentice, either."

"Mm."

"He's healed a lot, I think," Misao said. "You guys in Tokyo have been good for him."

"I wondered. He's ... it's almost as if he's been _trying _to be cheerful on this trip." Chiyoko brushed her hair back from her face, then handed the boy's yukata to Misao. "All done here. Got another?"

"Yeah, the hem needs mending on this. " Misao passed her a pair of Aoshi's trousers. "He probably is trying hard to stay cheerful. Kyoto has some bad memories for him, from what I've been able to learn."

"I ..." Chiyoko looked up suddenly. "He's coming."

"How do you know?" Misao hadn't heard anything.

"It's Kenshin-papa, or another Immortal. We can always sense each other." Chiyoko rose, hand on the hilt of her short sword, and padded to the doorway. After a second Kenshin stepped through it and gave Chiyoko an unsurprised look. He'd apparently been expecting her to be on guard.

"Chiyoko ..." He sighed, glanced at Misao, then sighed again. "I am sorry for what Hiko said."

Chiyoko was silent, for a moment, before saying, "He only said what he thought was the truth."

"Hnnh." Kenshin glanced at Misao. "Misao-dono, I'd like to meet with Iori yet today. Can Chiyoko stay with you and Aoshi?"

"Sure," Misao said. "Mind if I borrow her to spar with my boys? It'd be good for them to practice with someone who has a different style."

"Chiyoko?" Kenshin asked. "Do you want to?"

Chiyoko shrugged and said quietly, "I wouldn't mind."

---------------

Kenshin expected to find the son of an old friend at Iori's shop in a fashionable district. However, when he was within a hundred feet of the storefront the buzz of another Immortal stopped him cold.

He dropped a hand to the hilt of the iaito he was carrying and checked to verify that it was loose in its scabbard. It really wasn't much of a weapon, particularly against another Immortal who might also be highly skilled, but it was better than nothing.

Then, since he _did _need to talk to Iori, he proceeded into the shop.

Iori -- who looked a great deal like his father -- was leaning on a counter, talking to a grey-haired older man. The older man was the Immortal; he gave Kenshin a wary look, gaze flicking over him. "Hideo," he said, apparently an introduction. "You are?"

"My name is Himura Kenshin, Hideo-san," Kenshin said, nodding his head politely and praying this wasn't going to lead to a fight.

"Hnnnh," grunted the other Immortal.

"Himura-san?" Iori breathed, suddenly straightening up and staring in awe.

"You know this guy, Iori-kun?" Hideo said, short and sharp.

"I ... think so. I thought he was older," Iori said, in confusion. "He saved ... Himura-san, are you _that _man, who saved my life when I was small? You look like my father said ... the red hair, the scar, but that was so long ago ..." He shot a sudden look at Hideo, eyes going wide.

"It's him, certainly." Hideo leaned back against the counter. "I daresay he's older than he looks."

"Oro, what gave my age away?" Kenshin said, giving Hideo an amused look.

Hideo snorted a laugh. "Don't worry about the kid here," Hideo jerked his thumb in Iori's direction. "He knows. He damn well knows what we are. We keep him in business making _real _swords and not pretty playthings."

A bit sadly, Kenshin wondered what Iori's father thought of his son's trade. He didn't entirely approve himself, but then, he needed to buy a sword and somebody had to make them. He resolved to remain polite and say nothing.

Iori blinked, smiled, said, "Ah! You're one of them, then?"

"If by 'them' you mean an Immortal, yes, I am." Kenshin sighed. "I turned fifty-one this summer."

"You're just a baby," Hideo said, genially. "I'm seven hundred."

Kenshin internally boggled at the time, but managed to keep the shock from actually showing on his face by force of will. His first thought was, _Centuries alone without my friends, my family, without Kaoru ... I would go mad without them. _

He set the thought aside. Dealing with that was a long way away; he would revel in his friends and family while he had them, and mourn when he had to. What good would worrying about the future do?

But seven hundred years ... seven centuries. Kenshin found he could scarcely comprehend it. It was an enormous span.

"You've not been an Immortal all that long, have you?" Hideo said, genially. "We haven't met before; usually, someone points the newcomers my way eventually."

"About thirty years," Kenshin said, aware that Iori was listening with fascination. "I'm not sure precisely when I died the first time. I didn't exactly have an easy life."

Hideo clucked in irritation. "And nobody's thought to introduce us? Who's your teacher?"

"Hiko Seijuro?" Kenshin responded, a bit puzzled.

_That _got him a dark laugh that Kenshin didn't entirely understand. "Well, that explains why you're still alive, at any rate. There's a name I haven't heard in decades. And I thought _your_ name was familiar. A hitokiri, were you not? And a master of Hiten ..."

"Yes." Kenshin, a bit rudely, cut the other Immortal off. He didn't want to discuss Hiko at all; he was still moderately furious at him over his harsh words to Chiyoko.

"Hnnh. But your teacher -- the Immortal who taught you what you are? Who was he?"

Kenshin lifted a shoulder up in half a shrug. "Connor MacLeod told me a bit, but I didn't believe him. He tried to kill me to prove his point, and I won. He left me alone after that."

Hideo snickered. Apparently, he knew Connor. "You beat Macleod?"

"Hai. He wasn't very good." Kenshin smiled. "In retrospect, it would have been better for me if he'd defeated me. The next Immortal I ran into tried to take my head and I certainly wasn't prepared for it."

"I'll have to tell him you said that the next time I see him." Hideo grinned broadly. Kenshin relaxed a bit, disarmed by the man's behavior. He'd been suspicious at first, but then, it had been mutual. Hideo was not acting aggressive, though he seemed a bit crotchety.

"Other than that, I've spoken to Marshall ..."

"Feh. Now there's a gaijin I'd rather not hear about again." Hideo rolled his eyes. "Complete nitwit, isn't he?"

"I wouldn't go that far, but he drinks too much and he has poor choice in potential bedmates," Kenshin replied, warily. He wasn't sure what Marshall had done to offend Hideo. It could have been anything ranging from simply being English to a drunken pass similar to the one Marshall had tried on Kenshin.

"Likes 'em young, I know. Among other things." Hideo sighed heavily now. "I'd take the bastard's head, but he's never answered my Challenges. Somebody needs to remove his scalp at the shoulders."

Kenshin decided that maybe he _didn't _like Hideo after all. Tautly, he responded, "I don't believe in killing or this fool 'Game' we are supposed to play, Hideo-sama. You won't find me condoning murder."

"You _are _young." Hideo pushed himself away from the counter, straightened up from his relaxed slouch, and said, "My store's across the street if you ever want to talk about what it is we are. Sooner or later, you're going to have questions that idiot Marshall can't answer. See you then."

Kenshin watched him leave -- Hideo cut across the street and disappeared into a shop that sold books and antiques. Later, he would learn that the antique trade was quite a common occupation for Immortals.

Iori watched him silently. Kenshin ran a hand over his head and said sheepishly, "Sorry, I did come to see you, Iori-san. I guess I don't need to explain why I need a new sword in this day and age."

"Not really," Iori said, quietly. "Want happened to the sakabato that my father gave you?"

Blunt words; Kenshin wasn't sure if curiosity or suspicion caused them. He said, reassuringly, "I gave it to a boy I raised. He carries it now, and does it justice. He works as a bodyguard, and has become a good and honorable man. It was fitting that he receive my sword, as he is like a son to me."

"I was merely going to offer to repair it if it had been broken," Iori replied, to Kenshin's relief. "So. What sort of sword do you wish to have?"

"Another sakabato," Kenshin said. He lowered his eyes and said with a bit of embarrassment, "I understand that you cater mostly to the wealthy, and I cannot afford much. We are not ... wealthy."

Iori coughed, cleared his throat, then said, "I owe you my life, if the stories my father tells are true. I have something ... wait here."

The young man disappeared into the back room. After a moment, he returned with a blade that was wrapped in layers of cloth. He unwound the cloth, revealing a fancy scabbard and fancier hilt. It had jewels on it, and gilt, and elaborate designs.

Iori's eyes twinkled. "This was actually to be a gift from one rich man to another; he wanted a sakabato because he thought it would symbolize an end to bloodshed between his clan and the other man's clan. They were making some sort of peace deal. But it peace deal fell apart, and, well, I was left holding the sword. It's been in the back room there for almost three years."

"It's ... flashy." Kenshin held a hand out.

"Most of what I make is." Iori sounded almost apologetic as he handed the sakabato over to Kenshin. "My customers are wealthy; they want swords for show, not for wearing and using. Except for your people, of course. Immortals want _real _swords."

Kenshin drew the blade. It was well-balanced, and under all that gaudy exterior, there was a nice sword. Good steel, and a comfortable hilt. It felt okay; he knew he could use it without difficulty.

"It's a bit long for you," Iori observed.

"It is also a bit expensive," Kenshin said, regretfully. "This is more than I could afford."

He made a motion to sheath it again, and Iori rested a hand on his wrist. "You earned this sword the day you saved my life."

"Oro, no!" Kenshin was shocked. A sword, yes, he'd have accepted the gift of a sword gladly from this family. He had, before. But this wasn't just a functional sword; it was a gaudy bit of very expensive jewelry in knife form.

A wry smile crossed Iori's face. "I am wealthy, Kenshin. I can afford to do this. Take it."

"But ..."

"Take it. Or you'll offend me," Iori said, with a grin.

"Thank you," Kenshin said, simply. What else could he say?

He glanced at it, feeling a bit uncomfortable with the thought of simply wearing it. Oh, for Chiyoko's ability to make her wakazashi simply _disappear _that had come along with Quickening she had received. The sword was bright and it was gaudy and very obviously a rich man's toy. It was going to attract trouble, he just knew it.

"Anyway, it'll match your clothes," Iori said, making Kenshin look up sharply, then down at his brightly colored yukata.

"I suppose," Kenshin said, thinking to himself that colorful clothing was not the same as fancy sword. He _liked _bright colors, but that didn't mean he wanted his sword glittering and bejeweled.

_Sanosuke, _Kenshin thought with a flush of embarrassment, _Is going to see this blade and tease me mercilessly. Oro, I'm a dead man even if I'm Immortal. I'm going to die of humiliation. _

But it was a sword, and a fine gift, and there was no tactful way to say no. "Thank you," he repeated, with a bow to Iori. "This is more than I had hoped for."

He also realized, _And I can go straight home, rather than waiting for a new sakabato to be forged. _

_------------_


	36. Chapter 36

_Sano's going to tease me mercilessly_, Kenshin thought, as he followed Chiyoko down the road. His solution for hiding the gaudy hilt and sheath for his new reversed-blade sword was a long coat. The coat, which he'd picked up at a second hand market, was white, ankle-length on him (and probably calf-length on the taller man it had been intended for) and was remarkably similar to Sano's favorite type of jacket. It was only missing the kanji for _bad_ on the back.

It clashed miserably with the style of his hakama and brightly colored yukata, but it had sufficed to hide the jewels on his new weapon for the journey home. And it was _warm_ -- it was cold enough, with fall coming, that the air had a bite to it.

Sano, Kenshin knew, was going to find it very amusing that Kenshin had picked a coat _just like his_. Kenshin figured Yahiko and Shinya would join in the ribbing, and definitely Kaoru, and probably Kenji. And maybe even Megumi, with a sly remark or two. All his favorite people were going to _pick_ on him.

Sano would simply be the worst of the bunch, because Sano took such great delight in reducing him to a state of undignified embarrassment.

"Oro, this is going to be fun ..."

Chiyoko shot him a sympathetic look. She knew what he was worrying about, because he'd been muttering about it all the way from Kyoto. Dryly, she said, "You could always take somebody's head and learn to hide that pretty sword in plain sight."

Okay, not so sympathetic. Maybe he'd worn out her sympathy.

Kenshin sighed, then sucked in a deep breath of crisp, cool fall air. It was a beautiful afternoon, and very quickly, he'd have wife in his arms and life would be good again. He was home, he would see his friends, his family, his _Kaoru ... _he could cheerfully put up with a bit of teasing.

The deep breath brought with it the smell of smoke. Not woodsmoke, as from a cooking fire, but nasty acrid something-burned-down smoke. He, a veteran of many wars, knew that odor. It was old smoke, from a fire that was smoldering and nearly dead; it carried with it the scent of ashes and charred wood, plus household items that didn't burn cleanly. He associated that stench with death and despair and grief, viscerally. The odor brought back nauseating memories of the aftermath of battles; for a moment, he was thirty-five years in the past and right in the midst of the bakamatsu.

"Kenshin-papa?"

"Something's wrong." He broke into a run, put on a burst of god-like speed; was gratified when Chiyoko's months of training let her nearly keep up. She was ten paces behind him when they burst out of the trees beside the river and discovered the dojo was gone.

The wall was crumbled, the gate off the hinges, the dojo and the house both burned to the ground. He surveyed all of the damage in one appalled instant.

"Oh, Gods," Chiyoko breathed, sliding to a halt beside him. "Our home!"

"Where are they?" Kenshin breathed in horror, well aware of what Chiyoko was too young, to inexperienced to see. The gate had scars on it indicating it had been battered down. There was blood soaked into the earth where the entrance to the dojo had once been, and a tattered, gore-covered sandal by the well. Kenji's studio was still standing, but the door was kicked in. A bloody handprint marked the wall -- it had been left by one very large hand.

A broken sword tip lay at his feet. A splintered bokken was nearby.

This was the aftermath of a pitched battle.

And there was no sign of the people he loved. Wisps of smoke still curled from the rubble; he guessed that the fire had been a day or two before. More than time enough for any bodies to be cleared away ...

He closed his eyes, fighting back a wave of horrified emotion. For a moment, he was eight years old again, Shinta not Kenshin, all alone in the world and utterly terrified.

A warrior's ki brushed against his senses. Kenshin whirled, drawing his sword. Now he was fifteen, with something -- someone -- to protect. "Stay behind me," he growled at Chiyoko, as the ki approached.

Saito, looking more dour than usual, stepped through the gate. He took in a very amber-eyed and very hostile, Kenshin -- and the girl beside him, who looked almost as scared as Kenshin looked angry, and who had also drawn her sword despite Kenshin's ferociously protective words -- and Saito stopped short. He didn't look alarmed, because Saito wasn't afraid of the battousai, but he did look ... wary. "Kenshin," he held his hands up, "We've arrested them."

Kenshin blinked, but his eye color didn't change, and he growled, "Who?

"I heard you'd arrived on the steamer from Kyoto. You're earlier than we expected." Saito's hand dropped to the tone of the hilt of his katana, and his tone was quite cautious.

"_Who_?" Kenshin repeated, in a tone of voice that would have terrified anyone other than Saito. He hadn't been this angry in _many_ years. Saito was stalling and he knew it; Saito knew something he wasn't willing to say.

"Some fools from the village hired ronin -- the men were honorless bastards scarcely more than bandits! -- to get rid of the Kamiya dojo." Saito spat. "Cowards. They did it because they were afraid of what you are. We arrested the surviving ronin, and the idiots they ratted out, as well." He paused, and then said shortly, "We'll treat the ronin as yakuza, Himura. It's all they deserve."

"Was anyone hurt?" Chiyoko asked. Her voice was eerily calm; Kenshin realized he wasn't the only one who had lost one family and who was terrified of losing another.

"Excluding the dead ronin," Kenshin bit out. He had a good idea that the hired swords had gotten a bit of a surprise in that battle. They had to have been expecting trouble -- it was, after all, a dojo -- but they probably hadn't been expecting the _level_ of trouble they ran into. The Kamiya dojo had _not_ gone down easy. Kaoru would have fought like a mother bear, and Kenji like an ogre. Iku and Aki would have picked up weapons as well, and perhaps their younger siblings -- yes, all of them, save perhaps Yukio, who would simply have been too young.

It was a truly appalling thought to picture his family alone, defending themselves against ronin turned yakuza. He should have been there, with them.

"Your ... family's ... at Jessica Marshall's house," Saito said. He spoke carefully, words very precise.

Kenshin noted that Saito was definitely hiding something. But he knew from experience in dealing with Saito that the man was painfully close-mouthed when he chose to be. If Saito didn't want to tell him the details, Saito wouldn't.

Saito likely was keeping his mouth shut because someone had died. Saito would prefer that someone closer to Kenshin break the news to him. Grief clutched at Kenshin's chest, threatening to steal his breath away. He didn't yet know who, but _someone _had died. He knew that a person -- or perhaps people, plural -- who he loved were gone.

"Himura," Saito said, "The law's already taken care of it."

_That_ clinched it. Kenshin knew that Saito was worried that the battousai might want to exact a bit of revenge.

Kenshin said, shortly, "I don't believe in revenge, Saito. Come, Chiyoko."

Outside the gate, back down by the river, Chiyoko asked, "Do you think they're all okay?"

Kenshin saw no reason to lie to her. He said, simply, "No."

She didn't say anything else, just trailed silently behind him. Kenshin wondered silently who it was who he needed to mourn. Kenji? One of the children? Kaoru?

More than one?

The thought of losing each person had a unique flavor of utter pain. He couldn't bear thinking about it. Wordlessly, he broke into a run. Chiyoko, hardened by months of training with him -- training that had included many long runs through the countryside -- kept pace three strides behind him. The part of him that was cold and collected when confronted with terrible disasters noted approvingly that she ran with one hand on her wakizashi, ready for unexpected surprises.

But mostly, he just grieved. Because he knew. Even though he hadn't learned yet _who_, he _knew. _

Jessica's footman answered the door of the English-style house. Kenshin had never been inside; had only seen this home from the outside. He was in no mood to be impressed by the grandeur of the property, and he came right to the point, "Where are they?"

"Mr. Himura," the man answered, with an English honorific, reminding Kenshin that he didn't speak any Japanese. He added a long string of gutteral words that Kenshin didn't understand at all, and then gestured inside.

That was good enough for Kenshin, who rushed past him. "Kaoru!" He shouted. "Kenji ...!"

He would have gone through all of their names, but Jessica appeared from a hall. Her face was ... strained. Pinched. Her expression confirmed his very worst fears. "Kenshin, thank God, you're back early."

He swallowed. "Who?"

"Kaoru-chan and Kenji and the kids are fine," she said, making him blink. He was sure that there was bad news to be told yet. But, still, that was _good_ -- his family was okay. She continued, "Kaoru injured her leg in the fight. Kenji will have some interesting scars. But they'll be okay."

He exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Where are they?"

"Kenshin!" Kaoru shouted from the top of the stairs. She limped down them, holding up the hem of a Western gown that was too big for her -- the sight of her in someone else's clothes made him realize that they'd lost _everything_. Clothing, possessions, likely even the money that they'd hidden in the crawl space under the house.

She threw her arms around him and it was with incredible relief that he embraced her and whispered, "When I saw the dojo, I was so scared I'd lost all of you ..."

"Thank the Gods you're alive," he whispered into her hair.

Kaoru burst into tears. "We weren't expecting you back so quickly! I sent a telegraph to Kyoto, but that was only yesterday. Kenshin, Kenshin ..."

"Is everyone okay?" He gripped her shoulders, hearing something he didn't at all like in her voice. "Kaoru, is everyone okay?"

"Kenshin ..." her eyes were terrible. She'd been crying; she looked lost and alone and he knew things were not okay at all.

She just looked at him, tears brimming.

If the children were fine, and if Kenji was ... he mentally ran through a list that proved to be very short, because at that moment, Yahiko appeared at the top of the stairs, with Megumi a step behind him. By process of elimination that left one person whose loss was so terrible that it would make Saito hesitate to speak, and reduce Kaoru to wordless grief.

"Gods." Kenshin whispered, meeting Megumi's eyes over Kaoru's shoulder. She looked terrible. He whispered, "Gods. Kaoru, I asked him to look out for you."

"If not for Sano," Kaoru whispered into his shoulder. She was shaking with restrained emotion. "If not for Sano, we'd all be dead."

Her arms tightened around him, and she began to cry with bitter, broken tears. "He ... they were waiting for us to go to bed ... he came by after dark, to check on us ... he was surprised by them ... he put up a ferocious fight, and the noise ... we heard the noise ... we heard him shouting ... we heard gunshots ..."

Kenshin was _there_, in his imagination ... he could see Sano, white coat flying, fists and feet against guns and swords, shouting warning to the dojo, facing a fight that he couldn't win with bravery and courage right up to the last. If Sano had run, perhaps he would have lived, but Kenshin knew he hadn't. Sano would have fought until he could fight no more, and he would have taken as many of the damned bastards down with him as he possibly could.

For his little Missy and the children ... Sano would have fought to the death, and gladly, with courage to match Kenshin's own.

_I should have been there! _Kenshin thought, with bitter grief. Had he been home, he could have fought at Sano's side, and he _knew_ the outcome would have been different. They'd fought so many battles side by side and always, Sano's injuries had been minor.

Megumi, graceful and with an expression that was far too still, had descended the stairs while Kaoru sobbed. There was no trace of tears on her face. There was no trace of emotion at all. "Sir Ken," she said, "Sano survived the fight by a few hours. He died of blood loss ... he had time to say goodbye to those he loved. He was so brave, Sir Ken, but he cried at the end because he realized he would not live to see this daughter grow up."

She wouldn't meet his eyes, but when Kaoru stepped back, Megumi embraced him with one arm as well; Sanosuke's infant daughter was sandwiched between them. She whispered, "Sir Ken, don't ... don't blame yourself for this. Blame the bastards in the village who cannot see beyond their own fears."

He swallowed hard. "I'm sorry, Megumi."

She pressed a roll of paper into his hands. "He dictated this to me. It's to you."

"Thank you, Megumi," Kenshin's voice was too calm to his ears.

Her smile was chilly. "I'm going to go back to the clinic. My patients need me."

Kaoru said quietly, after Megumi was gone, "She's been like that since ... since yesterday. She hasn't cried."

"She won't," Kenshin said. He resolved that he wouldn't, either. What point was there to tears? They just watered the hurt. and made it grow. Dead was dead and there wasn't a thing that crying would do to change it.

_Kenshin,_ the letter read, _you idiot. _

Kenshin smiled at that; he could easily picture Sanosuke dictating those rude words to Megumi -- who would have written them down verbatim. Sano would have had a faint smile playing around his lips; Megumi, would have had grief in her dry, distant eyes.

_Kenshin, you idiot! _the letter read, _You idiot Immortal rurouni, you'd better not feel guilty about this. If you do, I swear I'll come back as a ghost and haunt you until you're _glad _to see me gone. I'm amazed you put up with my sorry ass all these years anyway. I haven't always been the best-mannered of friends._

Kenshin swallowed down a lump in his throat and resolutely told himself he wasn't going to cry. Because, for all his flaws, Sano had been one of his dearest, closest friends -- had he ever told the man how much he really cared about him? He didn't think he had, not in so many words, and now he regretted it. They'd been through so very much together.

He was alone right now; Kaoru was asleep in a rather uncomfortably soft Western bed. The room that Jessica had given them opened out onto a balcony; he sat outside, back to the wall. The night air was so still that the candle he was reading by wasn't even flickering. Except for the distant barking of a dog, there was no sound, either.

_I'm gonna keep this short. I just want you to know that I planned on checking on Kaoru before you ever asked, so this isn't your fault. I know you, my friend, and you're gonna blame yourself anyway. So I figure I'm gonna ask you for a favor and we'll be equal._

_I want you to promise you'll look after my daughter as if she were your own. Maybe I don't even need to ask this, but I'm gonna, because that makes it official. You look after that little girl like she was one of your own daughters, and you won't owe me anything._

_Make sure she knows how to fight, 'cause she's gonna be a pretty one, and she'll need it. I'm not asking you to train her, 'cause I know how you feel about that, but just make sure she _gets _taught to fight. _

_And when she's old enough, make sure she knows that her father loved her and is really sorry he couldn't see her grow up tall and beautiful and brave. _

_And Kenshin -- hug the Missy and those kids of yours for me. And remind them to not be too sad about this. I'm glad they're all okay and I hate to think they're gonna blame themselves. This isn't their fault. I'd make the same decisions all over again if I had to. _

_Guess there isn't really much else to say, 'cept that if not for you, I'd have been dead in some pointless fight a long, long time ago. You changed my life, my friend, and for that -- I thank you. _

The handwriting was all Megumi's, except for a shaky signature that was Sano's.

There was a postscript. It said, _Hey, something just occurred to me. If you're gonna live damn near forever, maybe I'll come back and I'll meet you again in another lifetime. If you do meet me again, don't forget that you owe me a couple of drinks for helping chop all that firewood last month. Don't forget to make good on that debt, ne? _

Kenshin tried to choke down a sob and failed miserably. Silently, alone, he leaned back against the wall, gazed up at a full moon overhead, and gave up. The tears rolled down his cheeks, stinging bitterly.

"Sano," he whispered, "You have my word -- not just your daughter, but her children, and all those that will follow them. I will look out for your family for as long as I shall live. And I thank you."


	37. Chapter 37

Kaoru woke early; Kenshin was snuggled against her, the palm of one hand on her stomach, one leg thrown over her knees. She lifted her head and regarded him in the dawn light coming through the glass windows in the balcony doors.

His ageless features, in sleep, looked like those of a teenage boy. His hair, loose from its customary pony-tail, tumbled across his bare, scarred back in crimson waves. The hand resting just above her belly-button was nicked, scarred, heavily callused, with a couple broken fingers that had healed crooked. It was a swordsman's hand.

She reached across her body with her free hand and stroked his hair back from his face. "Koishii," she murmured. From experience, she knew better than to move stealthily around him -- while he generally knew who she was, even in sleep, sneaky movements made him come instantly awake with his heart racing. He wasn't usually dangerous to startle in his sleep these days, but it tended to disrupt his rest rather spectacularly. And she had an idea that he might be a lot more on edge than usual, though, at least, he wasn't actually sleeping sitting up.

In any event, she wasn't going to try to slip out from underneath him without waking him first.

He blinked sleepily at her, violet eyes not quite coherent yet. She wondered what time he'd come to bed. Surely, very late. It was a measure of how physically and emotionally exhausted he was that he hadn't been instantly awake when she touched him.

"I'm going to get up. It's morning."

He hugged her tighter instead of letting her go. "Kaoru, this one loves you."

"I love you too."

"This one has lost a lot of people." He sat up and ran a hand over his face. His red hair tumbled down his back in tangled waves. "This one was scared he'd lost all of you, this one was. This one was afraid he'd get here to find that Saito meant that your _bodies_ were here, dead. It never even occurred to this one that it'd be Sano who had been killed ... and this one never even realized how much this would hurt."

She sat up too, and wrapped her arms around him from behind, his hair silky against her arms. "He was worried you'd let this eat you up inside, Kenshin. I told him you wouldn't. I reminded him that you'd lost other people. I told him you were tougher than that. He believed me, I think."

Kenshin nodded once. "This one must go on. It would be a dishonor to his memory if I do not, that it would." He sighed. "But it hurts, Kaoru. It always does."

"C'mere," she tugged at his shoulder until he turned around, then met his lips in a kiss. He embraced her so fiercely that his grip was almost, but not quite, painful, and he gently, urgently, pressed her back to the mattress. He didn't need to say anything -- they wanted the same thing: comfort and closeness from each other.

It was not so much lust that pushed them into a timeless rhythm as simply finding solace in each other's arms. In sharing their bodies they shared their grief as well; afterwards, she clung to him and he to her and she let the tears roll free.

Kenshin wasn't crying -- she'd only ever seen him cry a handful of times, once in the aftermath of a battle, once after that terrible nightmare -- but he held her. He held her for a very long time. She knew he hurt every bit as much as she did.

------------------

Much later, and reluctantly, Kenshin said, "We should get up. I want to talk to Jessica."

"Should I come?" Kaoru asked.

"Come with me. Please. I want to talk to her about emigrating. I don't know what it would be like for us, in England, but perhaps it would be better than here ..."

"_What_?" Kaoru demanded.

Kenshin said uncomfortably, "Kaoru, I don't know what else to _do_. People here know me. No matter where we go, people will _know _me. What happened here may happen again. And we are penniless now."

"I'm going to rebuild!" She said, defiantly, anger touching her words. She sat up, furious at the suggestion. "Damnit! Kenshin, I'm not going to back down and let them win! This is our home! We have a right to live here! You haven't done anything ..."

He sat up too, pulled her back into his arms, and silenced her with a kiss. After a moment, he let her go, then, kneeling on the soft foreign mattress, he said very seriously, "I am grieving one close friend. I do not want to grieve for the rest of you. I think perhaps that either we leave together or I leave alone ... but ..."

"No!"

"Kaoru, think of the children." He bowed his head. His first impulse was stubborn refusal to be driven out as well, but he had larger concerns than just 'showing them' that they couldn't be beaten this easily. "Were it just you and me ... this one respects your right to be defiant in the face of impossible odds. I would stand by your side and help you rebuild, if you wished it, if not for the children."

She snorted. "I had a good teacher in the 'stubbornly defiant' category."

"Ie, Kaoru. You had a ferocious streak of foolish courage long before I met you. Who was it who took on the hitokiri battousai with a _bokken_?" He gave her a small, rueful smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "But the children, Kaoru. We will be attending a funeral for Sano. Do you want to the next funeral to be for one of the kids?" He brushed her dark hair back from her face, then cupped her cheek with his battered fingers. "I don't. I don't want to bury you, either."

"You think it would be better in _another_ country?" She shook her head. "One where we do not even speak the language? Some foreign country ... you know how they treat us overseas. Ask ..."

He realized she was about to say, _Ask Sano_, but she bit back the name, and choked off a sob, and turned her face down and away. Sano had traveled the world, before he'd settled down for such an unfortunately brief period of time with Megumi. He'd had uncharitable things to say about gaijin hospitality -- or the remarkable lack thereof -- in other countries. Of course, Kenshin figured that his own people weren't exactly nice to foreigners in Japan, so he wasn't one to be overly critical.

"It could be, for awhile." Kenshin ran a hand over his hair. "I'd be less likely to be recognized overseas. People will assume I'm a boy -- you could say I was adopted, like the others."

"A lie."

"Yes." He bit the words out. "If it keeps you and the children safe, I will _lie, _Kaoru."

"So would I," she admitted, "If it kept you and them safe."

He exhaled a soft breath, thinking he had won.

"However, what does it teach them, Kenshin, if we leave?" She tucked her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. "Does it teach them to stand up for what they believe in, as you have done your whole life? Does it teach them that if you do the right thing, you _can_ succeed? Or does it teach them to run when life becomes too difficult? I've never run from anything in my life. Neither have you."

Her eyes were hard, and angry. "I'm going to rebuild my father's dojo."

"Kaoru ..." He said, in dismay.

"I am _going _to rebuild. Jessica's already said she'll give me a loan." Kaoru stood up, suddenly, and padded naked to the western-style dress that she'd left draped over a chair that night. She looked over her shoulder at him. "Will you try to stop me?"

"Kaoru ... this will _happen again_."

"I'm not going to let them drive me out!"

She wasn't thinking clearly, he realized. This was the same woman who _had_ challenged the hitokiri battousai, simply because she thought he was disgracing her father's school of swordsmanship by stealing the Kamiya name. She'd challenged him with a bokken, of all things. This was also the same woman who had taken on a whole band of yakuza in Yahiko's defense, because it was the right thing to do. And she was the same woman who had followed him across all of Japan because she loved him.

Kenshin knew that _logic_ wasn't always part of her decisions. Of course, given his own history of rather dumb decisions, he was hardly one to criticize. He rose, followed her, pulled her bare body against his equally naked length, kissed her and said, "Kaoru, sell the land, and build the dojo elsewhere in Japan." It was the best compromise he was willing to offer.

"No."

All he could think to do was just hold her close. There was so much comfort simply in touching her, and being touched by her. Skin to skin, body to body. This was the woman he'd given his heart to, and his body, and his life.

"No," she whispered, into his shoulder.

He murmured, low and urgent, "Kaoru, sometimes you lose battles even if you win the war in the end. The battle is for our acceptance here, and we have _lost_ that battle. The war, however, is one I will fight for my family's safety and welfare. That is a war I will win or die trying. I need you to fight this war at my side." He tightened his grip on her even more. "I _need_ you, Kaoru. I need you to fight _with_ me, not at odds with me."

"No ..." there was less conviction in her voice.

"This one never asks anything of you but to be my partner. As partners, we _have _to think of the children first." He let go of her, reached up, and brushed his thumbs across her cheeks, wiping away tears. "We will prosper again. Perhaps overseas, perhaps in another part of Japan. But our life here -- it is over. After the funeral, we leave."

"I ..." She lowered her head conceding to his argument. "You're right, Kenshin."

She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. "It just hurts. All of this hurts, so much."

"All of it is my fault." He sat down on the edge of the bed. Heavily, he said, "I thought, last night, about leaving you. I thought you might be safer without me, in the long term."

"No! Never! I'd follow you to the ends of the earth!"

"And the children?" he lifted an eyebrow at her. "Would you have left them behind or brought them with you?"

She exhaled, looking deflated and defeated. She wouldn't leave them and he knew it. "Why didn't you go, then?"

"I didn't leave because I knew you would have tried to rebuild the dojo here again. And because I simply could not do it." He stepped away from her, and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Kaoru, I just couldn't bring myself to do it."

"Good. We need you."

He ran a hand over his face, and said, "Sanosuke asked me to look after Raiko. That means I'll have to come back here eventually, but I think the best thing for us to do right now is distance ourselves from Megumi. I don't want her associated with me right now."

"Sanosuke would understand that. I think it's wise."

"Megumi's all alone," he said, quietly. "She won't have anyone."

Kaoru sighed, heavily. "Do you think she'd want to come with us?"

"I ... don't know." Kenshin closed his eyes. There was so much uncertainty in his future. "I'll ask her."

--------

Kenji was downstairs, seated on one of the wicker chairs on the house's front porch. Kenshin had been intending to check on the children, who were playing in the garden, but he stopped short next to his son instead.

"I don't remember a time when he wasn't in my life, like a sort've irresponsible uncle," Kenji said. Kenji's eyes were puffy and red, but his voice was steady.

Kenshin sighed. "I was talking to your mother about our future, Kenji."

"You're going to leave Tokyo." He said it as a statement of fact.

"Hai. It's the best decision, I think. I want to talk to Jessica about the possibility of emigrating to Britain."

"That won't work," Kenji said. He sounded miserable. "I've already talked to her about it. She doesn't think you two stand a chance of survival if you started a dojo. You might be able to find work as domestics, but I don't think either of you would be happy doing that." He gave his father a rueful look. "And you'd have a hard time finding work in any job involving manual labor."

Kenshin sighed.

"She ... she offered to take all of us in anyway, Father."

"Not if we can't support ourselves," he replied, with a shake of his head. "I won't accept her charity."

He nodded. "That's what I told her you would say."

"Kenji, what about you?" Kenshin asked, bluntly. "What are your plans?"

Kenji wouldn't meet his eyes, now. "I want to go to Britain with Jessica. She's been talking of returning home, at least for a visit. I ... Kenshin, she's my _world_. I've worshipped her from the very first moment I saw her, and I can't imagine a life without her, but ..."

"Go." Kenshin said, simply. It had been clear to him that Kenji felt that way about Jessica for a long time. "Go with her. You're grown, Kenji. It's past time."

"I ..." Kenji swallowed, hard.

"Go. With my blessings."

"Thank you. I ... I'm going to ask her to marry me."

"Past time for that, too, if I'm ever going to see grandchildren in my lifetime!" Kenshin said, earning a snort of laughter from his son despite the grief in both their hearts. He rested a hand on Kenji's shoulder, and squeezed and said, "You will be happy with her, I am certain of it."

"... Thank you."

------------------


	38. Chapter 38

Marshall sat easily on the back of a tall bay horse, hands relaxed, back straight, eyes forward. Chiyoko watched in fascination as, without visible cues, the horse began to trot in place. Then he sent the horse trotting in a tight circle before cantering sideways across the small ring.

It was like the horse was dancing, and Marshall was her partner. Chiyoko had never seen anything like it before in her life.

Marshall cantered in her direction -- and then stopped the horse so short that her hooves raised divots in the carefully groomed sand of the training ring. Chiyoko stared up -- way up -- at him. The horse was a couple feet taller at the withers than the top of her head. She was _enormous_.

Marshall dismounted, jumping down and landing lightly. He then reached up, unhooked his sword from the saddle, and hung it off his belt. Chiyoko hadn't noticed the sword until he drew her attention to it; she wondered if she could do the sword-what-sword? effect on a blade that she wasn't actually holding. She'd have to try, later. That would be useful.

"She's beautiful," Chiyoko said, voice awed. "Can I ... can I pet her?"

Marshall reached into the pocket of his coat and produced several peppermint candies wrapped in bits of paper. He grinned at the girl. "You want to give her a treat? She's a nice old mare. Her name's Bessy, like a plow horse, 'cause that's what she was gonna be when I spotted her."

"Yeah, sure," Chiyoko offered a peppermint to the mare, who lipped it off the palm of her hand. The horse chewed vigorously, then lifted her upper lip in a sneering expression that was evidently a reaction to the cool tingle of the candy. The mare, who apparently _liked _peppermint, then lowered her head and flapped her lips, begging for another.

Chiyoko obliged, then warily scratched the mare's forehead. She'd never been this close to a horse this huge before. "What kind of horse is she?"

"She's part shire and God knows what else. Good horse. And she likes dressage." Marshall's eyes crinkled into a grin that touched his lips a moment later. "You want to ride her?"

"Oh, no. I've never been on a horse in my life." Chiyoko held her hands up, as if warding the mere idea away.

"She's a great one to learn on. She'll do what you tell her to, and not give you any nonsense." He reached up and scratched the mare's neck, eliciting a lip-flapping response from her that Chiyoko would have found more comical if it hadn't revealed very large yellow teeth. Bessy leaned into his fingers, enjoying the contact.

"I don't think so ..."

"C'mon. Every little girl loves horses. And," he grinned even broader, revealing he actually had dimples, "it's not like you're gonna die if she tosses you off."

Chiyoko tilted her head, considering that aspect. He was right. The worst that could happen would be a few temporary injuries that would heal quickly. And ... he was also right. She had admired horses from a distance all her life. Her birth father, a wealthy merchant, had owned a few teams for pulling wagons, but she'd never been allowed to do more than pat them on their soft noses and bring them treats.

On the other hand, the mare was the largest animal she'd ever touched.

"Here, I'll give you a leg up," he laced his fingers together for her.

Impulsively, she started to put her booted foot in his hands. He said quickly, "Your knee. Put your knee in my hands."

Easily, he tossed her up onto the mare's broad back. Chiyoko picked the reins up, and stared down at the top of his head. He reached up, shorted the leathers on that side, then put a hand on her calf and guided her foot into the stirrup. His fingers were warm and she could feel the calluses even through the thin fabric of her hakama.

He reduced the length of the other stirrup leathers to match, then said, "For now, just squeeze with your feet to go forward, and steer her with the reins. Tip her nose in the direction you want her to go. Pull back to stop."

Chiyoko hesitantly tightened her legs against the enormous horse's sides. The mare stepped out, faster than she had been expecting, and Chiyoko yanked back on the reins. "Woah!"

The mare tossed her head in irritation at the hard tug on her mouth, and swished her tail. Chiyoko could feel muscles tense beneath her, and the mare made her displeasure known by swinging her head back, teeth bared, at Chiyoko's sandaled foot.

Chiyoko yanked her foot away from the threatened nip -- and accidentally kicked the mare in the side with her heel. The mare promptly burst into a run. Chiyoko lasted all of three strides before she went off backwards over the mare's tail and landed on her head.

-------------

He _knew _she would be fine. Still, Marshall's heart nearly stopped when the little Japanese Immortal went off backwards over Bessy's fat rump. She came down hard on her skull, then flopped limply in the sand. She was so tiny, so cute, and so helpless looking! And he'd thought she would be fine -- Bessy was so very well trained. He'd forgotten about the mare's tendency to rebuke ham-handed riders with bared teeth. She'd never, ever, actually bitten anyone -- but she made her opinions known if the rider didn't treat her with respect.

Bessy ran twenty paces, stopped, looked back, then started snuffling the sandy ground of the training ring for any sign of food.

Marshall ignored the horse for the moment and ran to Chiyoko, knelt, and said urgently, "You okay?"

Chiyoko's eyelids fluttered for a second, then she said, "Shit." In English, no less. He wondered idly where she'd learned the word, then realized that she'd been spending time with his rather brassy niece. He needed to talk to Jessica about her language again ...

"Errm." He rocked back on his heels. "That was quite a fall."

She sat up, and rubbed her head. "Tell me about it. My fault, I kicked her by accident."

"You actually told her to do that. One tap of a heel to the ribs is the cue for her to run." Marshall offered her a hand up. She stood, then cautiously poked at her bruised head with an index finger. He added, "That horse is real sensitive, so when you whacked her like that, she thought you wanted a dead gallop."

Chiyoko nodded understanding. She didn't look mad -- or, Marshall thought in surprise, scared very much.

"Here, let me see," he turned her around by putting his hands on her shoulders and urging her to spin about. Carefully, he parted her hair and checked the back of her head where she'd smacked the ground. There was no cut and no depression in the bone -- although she did have the beginnings of a big goose egg. She was an Immortal; she'd be perfectly fine. "You're okay."

"Yeah. Can I try again?"

He was surprised by that. But she shrugged and said sensibly, "The worst she can do is kill me."

He laughed. The girl had guts, that was for sure. He hadn't expected that, given her relatively quiet nature and small size. "Yeah, sure, let me catch her."

He boosted her up again and was rewarded by a big grin after she'd settled into the saddle and found the stirrups. He instructed, "Okay, this time don't _kick_ her. Just squeeze a bit."

---------

Kenshin hadn't actually been looking for Chiyoko; he'd been seeking a moment of peace to still his the turmoil in his soul. The Marshalls' house was enormous, and the grounds even bigger -- the garden was beautiful, a lush paradise of flowers and sculpted plants. Surely, somewhere, he could find a place where he could sit and just _be _for a moment.

Or maybe a flower bed that needed weeding, in lieu of mediation. Because frankly, meditation bored him to tears in very short order.

He followed a path, hands tucked into his sleeves and arms folded, until he felt the buzz of two immortals. Curious, he followed the sensation of incredibly strong _ki _to a stable, and beyond it, a sandy ring with a calf-high railing about it.

Marshall stood in the center of the ring. Chiyoko was riding one of the largest horses that Kenshin had ever seen -- not, Kenshin noted clinically, riding very _well _but he would not be surprised if she'd never been on the back of a horse before in her life. She was dirty, dusty, sweaty, and she was grinning from ear to ear.

_Teenage girls and horses_, Kenshin thought, with a bit of amusement. _They love each other._

Both Immortals glanced over at him, sensing his approach. Chiyoko hastily scrambled out of the saddle, dropping to the ground lightly -- he recognized several months of sword training behind that athletic move -- and ran over to him.

"Marshall offered," she said, looking very nervous. Her voice was too high. She knew his opinion of Marshall was low. "He said I could ride her."

Marshall trailed behind her, leading the big mare with one hand casually looped through the reins. Kenshin stared up -- way, way up. "Oro, that's the biggest horse I've ever seen in my life."

"I fell off!" Chiyoko sounded almost _proud_ of the tumble. "But I got back on."

_She's proud of getting back on, of facing her fear and conquering it_, Kenshin realized. Chiyoko wanted to prove to _herself _that she was tough, even more than she wanted to prove to anyone else.

Marshall said easily, "Brave young woman you have here, Kenshin."

"Mmm. I hope she wasn't imposing."

"Not at all. I enjoyed watching her ride. She could be very good, with some time and practice." He rested a casual hand on Chiyoko's shoulder. "I'd be happy to give her more lessons."

Kenshin simply didn't like that idea. And he couldn't exactly identify _why. _

"Oh, could you?" Chiyoko's eyes lit up. She bounced on her toes. Kenshin couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her that excited.

_I do not like Marshall_, Kenshin thought, uneasily. He just didn't trust the man. However, Marshall had been nothing but polite since they'd come here. And he _had _been very drunk the night he'd made a pass at Kenshin.

Marshall held his hands up, defensively. "Only if you approve, Kenshin-san. I promise, I'll be on my best behavior. You can kick my butt and I know it."

"_Please_?" Chiyoko begged. He'd never heard her _beg _before.

"Okay," Kenshin growled, unhappy about the whole idea. He supposed, however, that he could keep a close eye on the proceedings. And it _would _be good for Chiyoko to learn to ride.

He eyed that very large horse. He himself could ride, but he failed to see the appeal of mounting an animal _that _big. He wouldn't be able to get on her back without assistance. Gods forbid he fall off while on the road; he'd have to lead her on foot until he found something to climb on to get back on. After a moment, Kenshin added, "I'll still expect you to train with me for the usual amount of time, every day. And you'll be _sore _from the riding."

"Not like I'm not always hurting from what _you _do to me," Chiyoko shot back at him, with an easy laugh.

"C'mon, Chiyoko-san, I'll show you how to take care of the mare now that we're done with her. If that's okay with your father," Marshall said, hesitantly.

_Good_, Kenshin thought. _He's still scared of me. That should keep him on his best behavior. _And if Chiyoko was going to learn to ride, she needed to learn it all, including grooming and basic care.

He looked up at the horse, who was a good seventeen hands tall, at a minimum. Maybe more. Given the height of this mare, he hoped Marshall had a ladder. Chiyoko was going to need it to groom her. "Yeah, teach her everything, Marshall. You're right -- handling horses is a skill that might come in handy someday."


	39. Chapter 39

-1Yahiko had lost weight, and he had a nasty cough -- he hacked into his fist as Kenshin opened the door of Marshall's house early the next morning in response to a knock.

"Yahiko. I wasn't expecting you until later."

"I know you need my help." Yahiko stepped through the doorway, and glanced around the house with wide eyes, even though he'd been in the house earlier, when Kenshin had first come home. "Quite a home they have, isn't it."

"Yes, it's ... large." Kenshin agreed. The Marshall's home was ostentatious and not exactly to Kenshin's tastes. The grandeur had rapidly worn off, and he missed his own home terribly. "Did your employer find another bodyguard?"

"Yeah." Yahiko shuffled his feet. He'd been wrapped up in an important case for weeks -- one that the officials had been reluctant to trust to just any bodyguard. "She's a nice lady who happens to know too much about the crimes a local politician committed. She's to testify next week. Saito's loaned a couple of his men to watch out for her ... I hope they'll be sufficient." He coughed again, and muttered, "Damned cold. I can't seem to shake it."

"You should have Megumi look at you." Kenshin reached a hand up and pressed his palm to Yahiko's forehead. He had no fever that Kenshin could feel, but he didn't like the sound of that cough. It was thick and wet and seemed to be coming from the bottom of Yahiko's chest. Yahiko bore the attention with ill grace: he rolled his eyes and swatted Kenshin's hand away.

"I'll be fine. The lady I'm guarding has this crud and it seems to take forever to get over it. She's been coughing for months. I've had it for a few weeks as well." Yahiko shook his head, denying he was sick. "Are _you _okay?"

"No." Kenshin said, candidly. He closed his eyes again, feeling a wave of grief roll over him.

"Stupid question." Yahiko suddenly hugged him, startling Kenshin a bit. They'd never had a touchy-feely relationship, not even when Yahiko had been much younger. "Kenshin, it's not your fault."

"Aa." Kenshin said, quietly. "I know that."

"But you feel like shit anyway." Yahiko's brown eyes searched Kenshin's face. He shook his head. "You know, part of me wishes I hadn't taken that assignment to watch Tsuki from the police. If I'd stuck around here, and kept an eye on Kaoru and the kids, maybe I'd have had Sanosuke's back. It did occur to me that with you gone that it might be smart for one of us to actually stay with them."

"Maybe it would have made a difference." Kenshin pushed the swinging door shut. "Maybe not. We'll never know. If I'd been here ... would I have had time to get out of the dojo and fight at Sano's side and save his life? I don't know. I never will. He might still have died even if I was here."

"Doesn't stop either of us from feeling like absolute crap, does it? You can rationalize it all day and at the end ... he's simply gone. I haven't lost anyone that hurt this bad since my mother died."

"How's Tsubame doing? She was quiet, when she came by here, yesterday."

"She cried." Yahiko bowed his head. "He was like a big brother to both of us. I think she'll be okay. Shinya's taking it harder. He really looked up to Sano. Which is why I'm here."

"Aa?"

"We're going to be going to war again, ne?" Yahiko stuck his hands in his pockets and stared past Kenshin, out a window. "Shinya's a good boy, but ... I'm sick of war, Kenshin, and I'm sick of fighting, and he's old enough to be called up."

"Mmm. Yes." Shinya, Yahiko's hot-tempered and sensitive son, would not do well in a war -- both of them knew it. Kenshin suspected Yahiko didn't completely comprehend just how badly Shinya would fare; Kenshin recognized a good bit of his own teenaged passion and fire in the boy's temperament. If it came to another war -- and all the signs were that there was one brewing on the horizon -- the army wouldn't need to draft Shinya. The kid would volunteer.

Kenshin had volunteered too. This had not been one of the brightest decisions of his life.

"Is it horribly disloyal of me to want to keep my oldest son from another pointless war?" Yahiko looked away from Kenshin as if he wasn't sure he should be saying such things; his viewpoint was not entirely a popular one -- there were those who were blindly loyal to Japan. Kenshin wasn't one, and neither was Yahiko, who he'd raised and influenced.

"Take him with you, when you go. You are going -- it's the only decision you can make and we both know it. You need to go somewhere where nobody knows you." Yahiko met Kenshin's eyes squarely. His jaw clenched for a moment. "He'll hate me for it, but ... I want him to see there is more to the world than just Tokyo. I saw a lot tagging along after you, Kenshin, when I wasn't much younger than he was. It opened my eyes to a lot. I want that for my son -- I want _more _for my son. If you leave Japan, if you see the world ... it would be good for him to go with you."

"I'll talk to Kaoru, and to Jessica, but he'd be welcome, as far as I am concerned. And he's a good boy, Yahiko."

Yahiko sighed. "Just a bit green. And hot-headed. And impetuous. And ..."

"... just like his father." Kenshin smiled.

Yahiko snorted. "Worse."

"This one thinks, not really."

"Kenshin!" Yahiko protested.

"Remember the time you stole my sword?" Kenshin said, amiably. The moment of banter quickly faded, though, as the exhaustion in Kenshin's eyes swiftly returned.

"Which reminds me," Yahiko dropped a hand to his sakabato. "I'm going to pass this on to Shinya before he goes."

"That's what I had hoped you would do someday. Do you think he's ready?" Kenshin smiled.

"No, not really," Yahiko snorted. "I wasn't ready when you gave it to me. But if he goes with you, I won't see him for years -- it's the right time."

--------------

Later, the two of them walked through the market on the way to the remains of the dojo. The ashes had time to cool; they planned to get started on the cleanup.

"Any idea what happened to set people off about you?" Yahiko asked, quietly, when they were a sufficient distance from any other pedestrians to be overheard. They were being stared at, and both men walked with hands on their swords.

Kenshin glanced covertly around from beneath his red bangs. "There was a little boy that Kaoru was teaching who died of fever. Rumor was that I stole his soul to extend my life. That is the only thing I can think of -- but I cannot believe so many people would believe that. And this one mourns the child -- he was a good kid who often played with my two younger boys."

Yahiko sighed and coughed. "Kenshin, you look younger than _I _do and we both know you're almost old enough to be grandfather to Shinya. It is not natural. Not --" Yahiko held a hand up, forestalling Kenshin's protest, "-- that I'm saying you've any taint of evil about you. Perhaps you are a holy man, instead."

"Now you tease." Kenshin frowned at him.

Yahiko grinned. Then sobered. "Sorry, Kenshin. I've been saving that line for awhile. It just came out. But my point is, just because we don't understand why you do not age does not mean you're stealing little kids' souls."

"Obviously."

Yahiko flipped his hand in the air, indicating all of Tokyo. "Idiots."

"Idiots that cost Sano his life." He knew that Yahiko was just being Yahiko -- Yahiko was irreverent and irrepressible and had been his whole life. Still, it was hard not to speak shortly to him, to tell him that he was in no mood for banter. "Saito says their plan was simply to kill me and leave the others alive. I've told Kaoru that if we are attacked again to allow them to have me ..."

"... No!" Yahiko protested.

"... Yahiko-kun, I won't die unless they cut off my head. Kaoru is to tell them that the only way to kill me is to run a sword through my heart."

Yahiko snorted amusement at that. "Won't that hurt?"

Kenshin gave him a _look_. One red eyebrow arched ironically over his amethyst eye.

Yahiko cleared his throat. "You definitely need to get out of here. Come back someday when people have forgotten. Perhaps you could come back as your own son ..."

Kenshin gestured at the very distinctive scar on his cheek. Dispiritedly, he said, "That would be an excellent plan, Yahiko, except for this."

"Mmm. I see your point." Yahiko stepped over a noxious puddle in the street. They were approaching the Akabeko and he said, "Do you want to stop for lunch?"

"Ie, I don't want to bring trouble for Tae. Feel how they stare at us."

"That might just be the fact you almost never see samurai carrying swords anymore," Yahiko said, with a smirk that acknowledged the distinctive appearance the two of them cut when walking together. "Surely, the whole city doesn't know about you."

"Many of the vendors know us. They've both seen us many times before. They stare. Something is up." Kenshin gripped his sword tighter. The jewels on the hilt were rough under his fingers -- he hoped he would not have to fight with this sword. The blade was excellent, but the hilt worried him. It was designed to be a pretty piece of sharp jewelry, not a katana to fight with. "And rumors of a man who does not age -- the novelty of that alone, I am sure, causes much discussion."

Yahiko glanced around, then shook his head. "Fools."

"Perhaps."

-------

"Kenshin, I found it," Yahiko said, gingerly using a stick to rake a congealed and blackened lump of melted silver out of the ash. By the shape, it had run like water and puddled among the ashes before cooling. He stood in the middle of charred wreckage on the spot where once Kenshin's and Kaoru's bedroom had stood. They had been looking for the precious metal for about an hour -- Kenshin hadn't been entirely sure they could even find it.

The silver was still hot -- Kenshin touched the lump of metal with a finger cautiously, then walked over to the well, which had survived, and pulled up a bucket of cool water. He drank with his hands, offered a sip to Yahiko, the quickly picked the painfully warm chunk of metal up and dropped it into the water to cool off.

"Think it's worth much?" Yahiko said, doubtfully. He coughed thickly into his fist then spat.

"I don't know," Kenshin said, with a shrug. He surveyed the ruins for a moment. The task of cleaning the property up for sale looked to be enormous, and he truthfully wasn't even sure where to begin.

A few years back, a neighbor's house had burned. He -- and Kaoru and Sano and Yahiko and their families -- had all shown up the next morning with food, blankets, clothing. They'd helped cart away the rubble, and helped to rebuild the house. Everyone else in the area had pitched in as well. They'd all been a community together.

Kenshin ran a hand over his face, knowing he was leaving a trail of soot from his dirty fingers and just not caring. His neighbors hadn't materialized to help as he'd hoped they would, when he and Yahiko had shown up. And he didn't have the funds to hire labor -- all their money in the world was sitting in the bucket of water except for a few coins in a little pouch hanging from his belt.

He didn't want his younger kids to be involved in dirty, dangerous business of clearing the charred rubble. There was broken crockery and glass and sharp bits of metal mixed in with the ash and half-burned wood, and hot spots of smoldering embers still.

Kenji, for his part, had a nasty gash on his leg from the fight and he needed to stay off his feet as much as possible until it healed. Kaoru was needed to ride herd on the children and keep them out of trouble.

That left him and Yahiko today. Two small men, one with a nasty chest cold, and a one very, very large pile of rubble.

However, they would get a far better price for the land if the wreckage was gone. He needed to ask Jessica if he could borrow a horse and cart in the morning, to start hauling stuff away. And he'd bring Chiyoko tomorrow -- she was more than old enough to be useful. Or maybe Chi-chan could be left in charge of the kids and Kaoru could come.

He considered their options there ... Chiyoko was better able to defend herself if something happened, he decided, after a moment's thought. And she would survive an attack that would kill Kaoru. He would ask Chiyoko to come with them.

Anyway, he needed someone to start figuring out the logistics of actually selling the land and then moving the whole family overseas or to another part of Japan. Kaoru could start on that -- she was far more literate than he was, and was arguably better at handling paperwork and red tape and bureaucrats.

Somebody needed to sell the lump of silver, too.

"We can probably make a pile of the bigger bits of lumber and burn them down to ash," Yahiko suggested, drawing Kenshin's attention back to the problem at hand. Many of the heavier timbers hadn't burned completely. "That'll be less to get rid of."

Kenshin nodded. "Let's start pulling them out and piling them up."

An hour later they'd assembled a fairly large stack of half-charred timbers. They lit the fire using dry rushes from the river and coals raked out of the ash. The bonfire smoldered and smoked without enthusiasm -- it was a dirty, unpleasant fire that smelled acrid and promised to take a long time to burn down.

Yahiko hacked up phlegm and moved upwind of the smoke. Concerned by the rattling noises he was making when he coughed, Kenshin rested the back of his hand against Yahiko's forehead for the second time that day.

"I'm fine," Yahiko swatted Kenshin's hand away, with vigor. Kenshin's dirty fingers had left smudges on Yahiko's forehead, joining other smears of soot. "It sounds horrible but I really don't feel that bad."

He coughed again, then spat. The mucous that landed with a plop on the ground was tinged scarlet with blood.

Yahiko looked up and met Kenshin's eyes. Kenshin made no comment on the blood, though he knew his face betrayed his dismay. Years of helping Megumi at her clinic had taught him the meaning of that color. It was hard, and brutal, and miserable, and there wasn't a thing either of them could do about it.

After a moment, quietly, Kenshin offered in a voice that startled him in its calmness, "I promised Sano I'd look after his family. The same goes for you, Yahiko, if anything happens to you."

"Thanks." Yahiko said, quietly. Then he added impudently, "I guess you will outlive me!"

Without further comment he turned and walked back to the stinking mess that had once been the dojo. Part of the wooden steps had not burned; he yanked a board loose and carried it to the fire. "Couple hours until dark, I think. Let's keep working on this."

"Aa," Kenshin agreed. What else could he say? "Let's keep working."

--------------

Later, on the way home in the evening, they stopped at Megumi's clinic.

It was quiet -- Megumi met them at the door, let them in, and said in a hushed tone, "Raiko just fell asleep. It's good to see you both, but we'll need to be very quiet."

"Is she still crabby?" Kenshin asked, in concern. There were deeply exhausted lines under her eyes -- under other circumstances, he would have immediately offered to babysit.

"Sanosuke was better at getting her to sleep than I am," Megumi confessed, with a hint of embarrassment. "He doted on her ... I would never have expected that from him, you know, when I first met him? I never thought our Rooster would turn out to be the great man that he was." She paused, then added, "-- Kenshin, I'm sorry, but after tonight, I must ask that you stay away."

She bowed her head. "You are one of my dearest friends. But I have had two people come to me today, convinced their children are ill because of your influence. I find it ironic that they would believe that you, Kenshin, of all people, would harm a child in any way. I would trust you with Raiko's very life. But there is no convincing them that you are not some sort of evil spirit -- and now they believe that you are a vengeful one because of Sanosuke."

She sighed.

"The illness among the children is simply influenza. It is the same as it is every fall -- when the leaves turn, the fevers come. But more people are going to die, and they are eager for an explanation, for someone to blame, rather than simply bad luck and ill fate. It is easy for them to believe that if they rid the town of you, Kenshin, the sickness will leave as well. It is an action they can take, rather than simply sitting helpless ..."

She brushed her hair back from her eyes with her hand, then abruptly sat down in a chair in the clinic's waiting room. Megumi gazed up at them, and continued, after a moment of silence in which every iota of her heartbreak was visible in her eyes, "Kenshin ... I _need _you and Kaoru right now. You've both been my friends for more than half my life. I know I can trust you more than anyone else in this world. And yet ... my patients need me more than I need the support and comfort of your friendship. The children who are sick and suffering need me. And ... if you continue to come here, I fear that some of my patients may stay away out of fear and superstition."

Kenshin rested a hand on her shoulder. "I understand, Megumi."

"No! You don't." She wouldn't meet his eyes. "You, and Kaoru, you're the best friends I have. I owe you my _life._ And I have to decide between you and the clinic."

"You have chosen your patients." Kenshin said, quietly, hands by his sides now. "You must. And it will hurt, because you will miss us, but you've made harder decisions in the past. Megumi, you are strong. You will forge on for Raiko and for the people you can help."

"Kenshin's going to leave town," Yahiko said, softly, "You could always go with him., Megumi Start a practice wherever he ends up. There are always people who need help regardless of where you live."

"No," Megumi said, "These are my people. Kenshin -- these are _your _people, too."

"Hai. And someday, I'll be back." Kenshin said. It sounded like a vow.

"When are you leaving?" She sounded preternaturally calm.

"I don't know. We haven't even decided where we will go yet. But Megumi -- I promised Sano I would look after Raiko like she was one of my own. I cannot stay here, for the reasons you outline. But if she ever needs anything, or you do, know that I will _always _be there to help. Never hesitate to ask, no matter what you need. Money, a place to stay, protection ... somehow, I will find a way to arrange it or provide it. I only wish I could stay here to help you both more."

She nodded briefly. "I understand."

She rose, suddenly, and hugged him -- Kenshin realized it was likely the last time in a very long time that they would see each other. He'd been trying not to think about that, but her action suddenly drove it home. "Sir Ken, promise me something ..."

"Aa?"

"Promise me you'll never change. Please."

Yahiko snickered. "That's not something you have to worry about, Megumi. Not where Kenshin's concerned."

Kenshin's smile was very slight in response to Yahiko's teasing -- which sounded a bit forced to his ears, in any event. He simply said, "I'll write you, Megumi."

Concern flickered across her face, though she said nothing. Kenshin thought she might be worried about letters with his name on them being discovered.

Kenshin said quietly, "Look for letters sent to you from Shinta ..." he thought, for a moment, then said, "From Kamiya Shinta."

She smiled and said quietly, "Thank you, Kenshin. And I'm glad you will keep in touch."


	40. Chapter 40

-1

Author's Notes: Something lighthearted. Mostly. :-)

(And as an additional note, not everyone dies of TB. It is a miserable, crippling, disabling killer that has been around since prehistoric times but people DO recover from it.)

-------------

Chiyoko sat on the porch of the big house, drawing a comb through her damp shoulder-length hair. She'd had another horseback riding lesson with Marshall and she was quite grateful for her rapid healing abilities because the pain in her muscles and the bruises on her seatbones hurt worse than the lumps and soreness left after any training session with Kenshin -- and she had raw spots on the insides of her knees and where the stirrup leathers had rubbed against her calves. However, she'd be healed by dinner in a few hours.

Being an Immortal did have its benefits.

After riding she'd bathed away the horse stink and sweat -- the Marshalls had wholeheartedly adopted the concept of a Japanese bath house, something that she was grateful for.

Idly, she swept her hair up into a samurai top-knot with her fingers and wondered what it would look like if she started wearing her hair that way. Then she let her hair fall through her fingers; she wasn't a boy and she wasn't from a samurai family and she was just, she decided, having a fit of absurd humor. She pulled her hair back into a short ponytail at the nape of her neck, tied it with a bit of ribbon, and stood up to go inside -- she wanted to ask Jessica if there were any chores that needed doing. It was only right that she pitch in to help.

"Chiyoka-san!"

She turned in response to the voice, and saw that Shinya, Yahiko's son, was walking slowly up the drive towards the house. Chiyoko raised a hand in hesitant greeting.

She liked Shinya for his dry wit and for the fact that he had never once thought less of her for being a _girl _training at the dojo. He'd even stuck up for her once, when one of the older male students had made fun of her when none of the adults were around -- his response had been short, sharp, and to the point, and the bully hadn't repeated the insults.

He was two years older than she was, a head taller (everyone was taller than she was), and, in Chiyoko's estimation, he was also one of the better looking boys who had frequented the dojo. He was thin without being scrawny, and he had a neat ponytail of long, glossy black hair that fell to the middle of his back. That tail was as thick around as her wrist, trimmed squarely off at the end, and glorious. It made her want to pull the tie out and run her fingers through it -- something she thought about quite a bit in the dark hours of the night when she couldn't sleep.

In short, she was perfectly willing to admit to herself that she found him gorgeous. If there had been another girl she could call 'friend' in her life, likely she'd have giggled over him -- but there weren't any other teenage girls around that she could confide in like that. So she had admired him in appreciative silence.

He wasn't grinning today, however -- she saw the same grief in his eyes that everyone else was displaying. Chiyoko had only known Sanosuke for a year, and the pain at his loss was bad enough for her. The Kenshin-gumi had loved the man with a fierce collective affection, and for those who had known him for decades -- in Shinya's case, for his entire life -- the pain had to be so much worse.

"Hey," Shinya said, voice taut and far too quiet. "Have you seen my father?"

"He and Kenshin are out at the dojo, starting on the clean-up. They'll be back in a little while, for dinner," she replied, searching his face. She didn't like that tone of voice. It was strained.

"Ah." He sighed and waited a bit too long before saying, "My mom wants him to pick up some stuff in the market on the way home tonight."

"Well, stick around. He'll be here pretty soon." Chiyoko thought he looked distracted and vague, almost as if he was sleepwalking.

He slumped down, suddenly, on the edge of the porch. "You guys are leaving, aren't you? That's what my mom said you'd do."

"Probably."

Shinya rested his forehead on his knees. Voice muffled, he said, "I feel like everything's fallen apart. All my life, Sanosuke and Kenshin have been there -- my dad doesn't have any living family, but those two are like brothers to him and uncles to me. And the dojo's always been there. Kaoru's like an aunt to me. And Kenji ... Gods, I'll miss the big lunk. And I'm sure he's going to leave and move to Britain with Jessica.."

He huffed out a huge sigh. "I never see my father anymore -- he's always working on bodyguard assignments for the government, all over Japan. I know what he does is important, but he's gone so much ... and my mother's always busy at the Akabeko."

Chiyoko hesitantly rested a hand on his back.

His sigh this time was shuddering.

She couldn't believe it ... she'd never seen a guy come apart like this before. By the noises he was making, he was crying like a girl. Hesitantly, she said, "I had a life, you know."

He said nothing, just shook.

Chiyoko continued, "My father -- my real father -- was a rich merchant. He used to sell boatloads of furniture to the westerners. Made a lot of money on it. Apparently there's a fad for Japanese furniture in America right now and they're willing to pay lots and lots of money for it."

She lifted a shoulder in half a shrug, though Shinya couldn't see it. "He was a quiet man -- didn't say much, but I know he loved me a whole lot. I had four brothers, and I was the only girl, and the youngest -- I always had new clothes in the latest fashions, and brand new jewelry. I had a maid all my own, and lots of luxuries."

She continued, "There was this boy I was promised to -- he was the son of my father's business partner, and I knew I would marry him from the time I was very small. He was eight years older than I was ... the marriage would have been this summer, you know ... I was looking forward to it ..." She fell silent, remembering the hero-worship she'd had him, and just how much she'd dreamed of the day she would become his wife.

She continued, "He was funny, and handsome, and kind. When I was little he always brought me candy and when I was older -- for the last year or two -- it was gifts of precious stones and silks. I like to embroider ..." she touched the flowers she'd made on the sleeves of her yukata, "... and he gave me this thread once that was like spun gold. It was beautiful."

He sat up and looked sideways at her with a tear-streaked face. She hadn't removed her hand from his back and almost absently, she ran a hand over ponytail that she'd admired from a distance -- it was every bit as silky as it looked, before resting her fingers politely in her lap. He exhaled a hitching breath, and shook his head, as if denying he'd cried.

"Then one day, bandits killed everybody I knew -- my mother, my father, my brothers, the maid I'd had since I was a toddler, my best friends, my mother's maids, father's business partner, my betrothed ... everybody I knew died, Shinya. They killed me too, and I woke on my own funeral pyre from the pain of the burns."

He swallowed hard. She heard a gulp. "I never realized ... I never knew how bad you had it."

She was silent, not sure what to say to that. She'd told him about her past to commiserate, not to earn his pity.

"Guess we've got a bit in common."

"A bit," she agreed.

Then she nearly jumped sideways in surprise when his hand hesitantly touched her shoulder. "Chiyoko, I'll miss you, too, when you leave."

She blinked at him.

"You're cute," he said, with a dimpled grin that quickly faded away. "Wish you were sticking around."

Impulsively, she hugged him. His arms wrapped around her in response, and while she'd intended the embrace to be platonic, her heart started to race in response to the feel of strong arms holding her. His hair slid over her hands in a silken waterfall and his breath whispered against her cheek, close to her hear. Hesitantly, she said, "I won't be leaving for awhile, Shinya ..."

"Yeah," he whispered back. "Not for awhile, anyway."

-------------

Yahiko was too pale; Kenshin watched him covertly as they walked back to the Marshall's house. He was also far too stubborn to ever admit that he was sick, and even if he did, if he was sick with the illness that Kenshin suspected ... there wasn't much that could be done. He would get better, or not.

Kenshin sighed a strictly mental sigh as they walked through the gates. He was truly exhausted -- he was looking forward to a bath and sleep, and only Kaoru's likely reaction to his sooty, sweat-smelly body in the bed with her was keeping him from swapping that order and heading for bed first before cleaning up. He was afraid he was going to fall asleep in the tub.

"Well, that's new," Yahiko said, just as Kenshin felt the buzzes of two Immortals.

Kenshin glanced up, saw what Yahiko was looking at, then shot a look at the younger man with one ironic eyebrow lifting in something akin to amusement -- he was too tired to really feel any humor, but the idea was lurking there somewhere, deeply buried. "I have no objections if you don't."

Yahiko shrugged. "He could do a lot worse than her. Might complicate things for you when you leave and take him with you, though."

"If things get ... complicated ..." Now a sense of humor did break through Kenshin's fatigue, "... they're both old enough for a date with a priest."

Yahiko grinned, obviously appreciating Kenshin's wit and the truth behind it.

Both men stopped in the drive, watching the two teens on the porch of Jessica's large house. Chiyoko was burrowed into Shinya's arms, and Yahiko's teenaged son had his arms wrapped tightly around her. He was rocking her back and forth and stroking her back.

"Are they crying in each other's arms or making love?" Kenshin asked, with a snicker. He thought he saw tear tracks on Shinya's face -- but Shinya's hands were sliding up Chiyoko's back in a rather suggestive manner now, and she had her fingers tucked into his belt.

"Possibly both," Yahiko's tone of voice was very, very dry.

"How old were you when I caught you and Tsubame down by the river?" Kenshin teased.

"Younger than those two by a few years," Yahiko replied, unruffled. "And it was worth the teasing from Kaoru and Sano to get a chance to kiss her."

"You know," Kenshin said, as they watched Shinya run his fingers through Chiyoko's hair, "I really wish Sano was here. He'd know exactly what to say ..."

"... to make them turn the best shade of red, yes," Yahiko agreed. "I guess we should honor his memory."

Kenshin grinned. "For Sano."

"For Sano."

The two men walked quietly closer with the silence only a pair of samurai could manage. When they were about five feet away, Yahiko cleared his throat.

Shinya looked up from nuzzling Chiyoko's neck -- then the two sprang apart. His face turned bright red and he stammered,"Father! Kenshin-san!"

Kenshin said dryly, "Do I need to start calling you 'son', Shinya-kun?"

Shinya stammered something completely unintelligible. Kenshin wasn't even sure the noises Shinya was making were intended to be words.

"Phew, Kenshin-papa, you _stink_," Chiyoko sniffed. She pinched her nose shut in reaction to the aroma a day's hard labor at the dojo had given him.

For a moment, he was baffled by her reaction, because she didn't look the slightest bit flustered or surprised.

Yahiko snorted. "You're a little minx, Chiyoko. You knew we were watching."

_Now _she blushed.

Realization dawned on Kenshin -- he'd felt the buzz of other immortals, of course, as he had approached the house, but had forgotten that Chiyoko would likewise sense his approach. He was very tired -- his mind was fuzzy with weariness and he wasn't noticing even the obvious. Kenshin managed a dignified, "Shinya? Perhaps you would like to come to dinner and have a talk with me later about your intentions towards Chiyoko?"

"Umm." He gave a distinctly longing look towards the road, like he wanted to bolt.

"Kenshin-papa, don't be cruel," Chiyoko scolded him. She sounded irritated. Her eyes were also dry -- it was Shinya who looked like he'd been crying.

Perhaps he was being mean to the boy.

Oblivious to Kenshin's sudden concerns, Yahiko said, "Oh, he's not being cruel. Cruel would be observing that you two looked like you were making love standing up."

Her blush deepened.

Shinya stammered, "Mom -- mom wanted me to ask you if you were coming home for dinner or staying here, Papa. But ... but ..."

"But you got distracted by a pretty girl," Yahiko lifted an eyebrow at Chiyoko. "Trust me, I understand the appeal."

"She's not just a pretty girl!" Shinya protested.

"Maybe, but you have to admit, she _is _pretty." Yahiko was smirking.

"That wasn't ... I hate you!" Shinya suddenly exclaimed, fists balling. "You always pick on me and it's no fair and I just ... I just ... she _listened_, papa!"

He whirled away from them, vaulted one-handed over the porch railing, landed lightly on the ground, and stomped off. Every line of his thin body radiated outrage and hostility.

Chiyoko said tautly, "Yahiko-san, I just spent the last hour with Shinya crying in my arms. I know what it's like to lose people you love and he's hurting bad right now. You really shouldn't have teased him like that." She hesitated, then said in a softer tone. "I don't think he'd tell anyone but a girl how bad he hurts. He certainly isn't going to talk about it with you, or any other guy. And he needs someone right now."

Yahiko was silent. They stared at each other. Chiyoko's chin rose and she glared, arms folded. Yahiko looked away first, and mumbled, "I thought you two were just ... groping ... each other."

Without a trace of embarrassment, Chiyoko said, "That, too."

Kenshin sighed.

"What?" She demanded, of Kenshin.

Kenshin shook his head. He wasn't going to get in an argument with Chiyoko over this -- her hormones as they related to Shinya were very low on his list of concerns at the moment, and he had bigger battles to fight. And she was likely right about Shinya needing someone to talk to. "Go after him, Chi-chan. Tell him I said that he's truly invited to dinner, and that we're not mad at him. Or you."

Some of the fight went out of her posture. "Thank you, Kenshin-papa."

"Mm. Just don't get caught doing anything disgraceful in public, ne? We can't afford a wedding right now."

She smiled at him, then ran in pursuit of Yahiko's boy.

Yahiko sighed. "I didn't handle that very well, did I?"

"Shinya's head strong and he has a temper," Kenshin said, carefully, "And he's got a tendency towards drama. I'm not sure there's much you _could _say or do that would make him happy at the moment."

Kenshin added, after a moment's thought, "He could be a lot worse."

"And how would that be?"

Kenshin responded dryly, "You don't want to know what _I _was like at seventeen. Angst didn't begin to describe it. That was the year after the bakumatsu -- I think I spent most of it sleeping under bridges and in farmer's fields. And a good bit of that year I spent staring at a pot of sake, as well."

------------


	41. Chapter 41

-1It was weird and somehow marvelous, Chiyoko thought, how easily the big mare accepted her commands. Bessy outweighed Chiyoko by many times over but the horse listened and obeyed as long as she gave the cues properly. Bessy could have made a greasy smear of her had she wanted to -- yet Chiyoko could control the horse with a gentle hand on her lead rope, or when riding, with a few soft verbal commands, and polite cues with her hands and feet and weight.

Marshall sat easily on the back of a leggy bay gelding in the center of the ring. Marshall's gelding was far more fractious -- Chiyoko could see his ears were pinned and he was tossing his head with impatience at being asked to stand quietly while the other horse got to trot.

"Wrong diagonal," he said, mildly.

Chiyoko sat down, bounced a couple of times, then started posting again -- she was supposed to rise out of the saddle when the mare's inside leg swept forward.

"You're still on the wrong diagonal," Marshall repeated.

Gritting her teeth -- this was more frustrating than learning katas with Kenshin, who was an absolute perfectionist -- Chiyoko sat down through one stride, then started posting again. Her thighs protested the work, and she had an incipient cramp in the middle of her back. Her butt was going to be bruised black and blue. She consoled herself with the knowledge that all of the pain was worth it, and would only be temporary.

"Better," Marshall nudged his gelding away from the center of the ring. "Now reverse directions across the ring. And don't forget to change diagonals when you do."

Turning the horse around, remembering to pick up the right diagonal, and not yanking on the mare's mouth or losing her balance while doing so, was harder than it sounded by far. Chiyoko struggled through a somewhat sloppy turn, found the other diagonal -- she hoped -- and trotted counterclockwise around the ring. Her fingers were aching holding the reins and her calves were starting to sting from the friction of the stirrup leathers against her skin.

"Do it again," Marshall said. He made her reverse directions a dozen more times then said, "Halt."

Chiyoko sat down and stopped the mare as quickly as she could by gently pulling on the reins and stilling the motion of her body. Bessy, who liked to trot, swished her tail in irritation and tossed her head. Chiyoko tightened her grip on the reins, booted her in the ribs with her heels, and growled, "Stop that!"

The mare subsided, moment of protest quickly passing.

Marshall was grinning at her. Apparently, he approved of her rebuke of the horse. "Good job. She'll test you a little bit but that old mare's a great schoolmaster. She'll listen if you make her."

"This is fun," Chiyoko said. "Thank you for the lessons."

He grinned. "This is _work_. I think you've earned some fun, though. Follow me."

He turned the leggy bay around and put the horse into a loose trot out of the ring and towards the front gate. Chiyoko gamely followed, though a sudden wave of anxiety rolled over her at the thought of leaving the controlled environment of the ring for the unknown of the road.

Marshall's gelding fought the reins, tossing his head and wanting to run. Bessy was far more tractable; Chiyoko relaxed when she realized she could still rate the horse's speed with her weight and gentle tugs on the reins with her fingers. Marshall led the way down to the river, weaving through foot traffic on the road. "Ready to run?" he shouted over his shoulder.

"What? No!"

The bay gelding shot forward suddenly, responding to a slight cue from Marshall. Bessy followed, breaking from a sweeping trot into a rolling canter. Gamely, Chiyoko let her go and concentrated on not being bounced out of the saddle by the heaving of the horse's back. Her butt slapped the saddle and her knees rubbed painfully against the stirrup leathers and the saddle itself.

After a moment she realized that they weren't really moving all that fast -- the gelding's nose was tucked practically to his chest, his ears were flat, and his tail flagged over his back. He wanted to go a _lot _faster than Marshall was letting him, and their pace wasn't much faster than the trotting had been a minute ago. Bessy was listening far better, speeding up and slowing down in response to Chiyoko's hands on the reins. If only the run wasn't so _bumpy_ Chiyoko might have truly enjoyed it ...

"You're doing good!" he shouted at her, over the noise of hoofbeats.

Grimly, she nodded and hoped he would stop soon.

To her relief, he pulled up before a bridge that crossed a small, sluggishly flowing creek. The gelding eyed the bridge suspiciously, snorting. Marshall growled at him, and urged him forward. The gelding refused, squealed, kicked out with his back feet. He went sideways rather than straight forward, tried to spin and run for home, then tried to rear and got a swift kick in the ribs in response.

The bridge was _scary_, the horse insisted.

Marshall sighed, "Would you go first? Idiot boy here has the brains of a squirrel."

Chiyoko nodded and asked Bessy to cross the bridge. The big draft mare flicked her ears a couple of times, and tensed as she put her first foot down on the bridge -- then relaxed and walked across it after it proved capable of bearing her weight.

Marshall swore under his breath in English at the horse as his gelding still proved reluctant to cross the bridge. He kicked the horse again. "Start walking down the road. He'll want to follow and not get left behind ..."

She did, and Marshall was right -- suddenly, the gelding charged forward, running across the bridge. His hooves slipped and scrabbled on the wood and Marshall snarled, "Woah!"

To Chiyoko's horror, the horse started to go down. Marshall leaped clear, throwing himself from the gelding's back -- he went right over the bridge's wall and into the shallow water below. The gelding's shoulder hit the wood with a crack, then he scrambled back to his feet and bolted, trailing the reins and with his stirrups flapping. Chiyoko saw that Marshall wasn't moving and leaped out of the saddle -- Bessy took off after the gelding -- and ran for the creek's edge.

Marshall was sprawled unconscious in the shallow water. She waded in, grabbed his arm, and pulled him out onto shore. She was grateful he wasn't a big man -- months of training with Kenshin had made her strong, but she would always have definite limits when it came to heavy lifting.

He wasn't breathing. She rolled him over onto his stomach and water drained out of his mouth. Then he sucked in a gasping gulp of air and promptly threw up.

Chiyoko said, "Ew!" and moved away.

"That's real sympathetic," he growled at her.

"You're not hurt that bad," she sat on the grass on the bank a good distance from his vomit. "If you were mortal, I'd be a lot more worried about you."

"Where are the horses?"

"Halfway home by now, I'd imagine."

"Fuck," Marshall said, in English.

Chiyoko giggled.

"Please don't tell me you know what I just said," he ran a hand over his face, stood up, coughed hard, and leaned against a tree until he caught his breath.

"Jessica's been teaching me English."

"Of course, she'd consider the naughty words the most important bits. That girl could swear like a sailor when she was three years old. Did, too, just to shock her mother's friends." Marshall shook water from his heads. "I'm soaked through -- you're all wet too. You fished me out?"

"I think you knocked yourself out when you fell in and you ended up with a lungful of water." Chiyoko shivered in her now dripping clothes. The fall day hadn't seemed cold when she had been riding, but now, the wind had a bitter bite to it.

"We'd better start walking back." He suited action to words, heading home at a rapid pace.

Chiyoko hurried to keep up with him. After a bit, she wasn't so cold -- the sun was shining brightly and walking warmed her. Marshall slowed down a bit, and she was able to walk beside him.

"Sorry about this," Marshall said, after a moment. "Going out for a hack was supposed to be fun."

Chiyoko nodded once, but said only, "I think I do like horses."

"You've got natural talent," Marshall said. "That's one area where being short will always help you. Short people tend to be better riders."

"Forgive me if I say that I'd rather be taller anyway," Chiyoko said, in an aggravated tone of voice. "I'm afraid being short is going to get me _killed _someday."

"Mmm." Marshall said, "True."

"That man I killed ... I saw ... I saw a lot of things, in his memories." She glanced up at him. "Marshall-san, he was a bad man. And now he lives in my head. He did some awful things. I wish I'd never taken his Quickening, but he would've killed Kenshin ..."

She fell silent. She hadn't meant to say anything, but the words had just come out. She didn't really have anyone she could talk to about this -- certainly not Kenshin, for he would have felt horribly guilty.

"That Quickening may well keep you alive, Chi-chan, because of the knowledge and skills it gave you. It isn't often that a young Immortal like yourself takes someone that old and experienced," he said, sounding sympathetic. She was glad for the understanding tone -- she'd been worried he would dismiss her concerns. She knew, or at least assumed, that Marshall had taken his share of heads over the years. He added, "And look at it this way: you have his memories, but he's no longer in the world doing evil."

"Yeah, I figured that out myself," Chiyoko said, with a trace of sarcasm. "Knowing what I know about him, I'd do it again. Just -- sometimes I dream about things he did, and it makes me feel filthy inside."

"This is why I only take heads when I'm forced into it. I've had those sorts of dreams too."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Really. They're not pleasant. You just have to keep reminding yourself that _you _didn't do it, and by ridding the world of the evil Immortal who did, you've done a good thing." He frowned, brows pulling together so that horizontal lines appeared between his eyebrows. "I think most Immortals end up with some pretty awful nightmares eventually."

"Kenshin doesn't see it that way -- he doesn't believe that bad people should be killed. He's so firmly against killing for any reason. He believes everyone can be redeemed."

"I know you love your foster father," Marshall said, carefully, "But he is an idealist. You're going to live in the real world for a very long time, Chi-chan. You'll need to learn when to stick to ideals and when it's far more practical to deal with reality."

"Reality." She snorted, an unladylike sound -- but she was soaking wet, wearing a boy's yukata and trousers, and her hair had come loose from its tie and hung loose and dripping in her face. She didn't exactly feel like a lady at the moment. "The reality is that I'm going to look like a fourteen year old girl -- a _short _fourteen year old girl -- for the rest of my life. I'm never going to grow up, get married, have children, have a normal life."

He folded his arms and gave her a long, measuring sideways look. "Ask Jessica to help you with makeup and maybe some shoes with high heels. I think you could look a fair bit older than you do, if that bothers you. And, umm ..." he unfolded his arms and made a gesture at his own chest level. "... you might want to add a bit of padding."

She blushed furiously, lifted her chin, stared straight ahead, and refused to acknowledge that comment.

He laughed. "It's true, I'm afraid. Kiddo, you're going to need to be practical. But I think you could probably pass for eighteen or nineteen with a change in your look."

She deflated, and said wryly, "You're right. Unfortunately. What guy's gonna want me when I look like a kid?"

"You don't look like a _kid_," he said, "Hell, I think you're a good looking woman. You just look very young. And I think if you can add a few years onto your physical age by the way you dress -- you'd be surprised at how attractive men will find you."

"I still can't have children," she shook her head, limp wet hair swinging around her ears. "There's this guy I like, Marshall-san -- he's _gorgeous_. And he's kind, and I know Kenshin likes him. Kenshin considers him family already -- he'd be a perfect match for me if the circumstances were different. But ..." she sighed. "... he'll grow old, and I won't."

"Is he interested in you?"

She blushed ferociously again. Shinya had made it clear that he liked her -- a lot -- and she could practically still feel the heat of his lips on hers and the weight of his hands on her hips. There had been a certain hard, urgent heat against her stomach, too, that had been most fascinating. "Uh, yeah."

Marshall's laugh was even more amused than before.

"But Marshall, when he's old and I'm not -- it's gonna look very weird. People will think he's a pervert. And there won't ever be children. He doesn't know about that, I don't think. And we'll have the same problems that Kenshin and Kaoru have -- I won't age, and people will notice. We'll have to move away. Plus I worry what might happen if people come after me -- I'm _better _at swordfighting than he is, but he'll want to defend me anyway. He might get hurt."

"All valid concerns." Marshall scratched his jaw. "A lot of Immortals find other Immortals to have relationships with for the reasons you just listed."

Bitterly, she said, "How would I know that they wanted to be friendly? They might just want my head. The idiot I killed, he -- he used to do that. He'd charm the ladies and then kill them after he'd had his way with them. Nasty man."

"Mm. I'm sorry you had to find out about that sort of thing so young," he stopped, suddenly, and she came to a halt a stride later and turned to face him. He reached a hand out and tucked her damp hair behind her ears. "Kiddo, wait a few years and then look me up." He gave her a grin that was almost shy. "It's been a long time since I had a young lady in my life."

She blushed tremendously for the third time. "You're old enough to be my grandfather!"

"Great-great grandfather, if you want to be technical about it," he corrected. "Don't worry, I won't hold your youth against you if you promise not to hold my ..." he dropped his voice an octave and purred, "... experience ... against me."

His hand cupped her jaw. "Chi-chan, I like you. I have since the first time I met you. Just ... I know I'm a dirty old man, but you'll live centuries and so will I. In a few decades, the age difference between us, it won't matter as much."

She pulled away, and looked away, staring past him. "Kenshin wouldn't approve."

He huffed a sigh. "You're right. He probably wouldn't. Umm -- could you do me a favor and not tell him about this conversation? He might overreact, and I promise, your virtue's safe with me. I don't want to fight with Kenshin -- I think it's safe to say he's going to end up Jessica's father-in-law. We need to get along."

"Yeah, sure." She dimpled suddenly. "I do like you, Marshall. Just -- it'd be too weird."

"Perhaps," he sighed and started walking again. She hurried to follow, hugging herself, and not quite sure how to feel about him now.

He was old enough to be her ancestor.

On the other hand, he didn't _look _that old -- he had a little grey hair, a few lines around his eyes -- but she thought he was rather ruggedly handsome. And he had just said he found her attractive, something she found startlingly wonderful. Because she wasn't entirely sure she really was and it was nice to hear that from someone who wasn't a _boy _like Shinya.

Marshall was a grown man. And he'd just said he liked her.

She glanced up at him.

He smiled slightly at her, but said nothing more.


	42. Chapter 42

-1Author's Note I concur with the "ewwwws!" as far as Marshall goes.

Also, I'm home sick with a bad cold. So I've given myself permission to indulge in some serious fanfic writing for the next few days. :-)

-------------------

Jessica's voice, speaking the guttteral tones of English, came from the house's library. Kenji responded -- in halting English as well. And then Chiyoko answered, in far less hesitant English, and with a laugh.

He paused, wondering where Chiyoko had learned English -- then belatedly he remembered (1) that the man she had killed had left her with much of his knowledge and skills. She hadn't become near-brilliant with a sword on natural ability alone; some of that had talent had come from the abilities of the man whose Quickening she had taken. Likewise, she'd gotten his memory -- and some of his language.

The library door was partly open. Kenshin pushed it the rest of the way, discovered the three people he'd heard plus Yukio, who was sitting in the corner looking at a picture book. He said, "Good morning."

"Good morning, Father!" Kenji started to stand up from the chair he was seated in, then slumped back when his leg apparently hurt. Kenshin saw him subtly wince. The other two chorused greetings.

"Papa!" Yukio bounced to his feet and ran across the floor. Kenshin swept him up, balanced him on his hip, and hugged the little boy. "Papa! Papa!"

"Good morning, Yukio." Yukio was four now and several months of good nutrition had led to quite a growth spurt -- the kid would almost certainly end up far taller than his older siblings. He was getting almost too big for Kenshin to easily pick up.

But he wasn't too heavy just yet. Kenshin held him close, smelling the scents of soap and clean little boy, and thinking, _This is my littlest son_.

Reluctantly, he put Yukio down. "Yuki-kun, would you go find your mother?"

"Okay." Yukio used the English word -- Jessica had apparently been teaching Yukio English as well, to Kenshin's definite approval. Given the way relations between Japan and England had been going lately, being bilingual might be a definite advantage in the future.

Yukio ran out the door, scampering like a puppy around the corner.

"He's such a sweetie, Kenshin," Jessica said, "He's like the baby brother I always wanted. And it's cool that Kenji loves him so much, too."

Another man might have been embarrassed by that impulsive declaration. Kenshin was proud of his son when he simply smiled and said, "I _am _enjoying having younger brothers and sisters."

"Yeah, you eat up the hero-worship," Jessica was standing beside him; she ruffled his red hair with her fingers.

"_What _hero-worship?" Chiyoko scoffed. "I don't see any hero-worship here."

"Face it, Chi-chan," he reached out, grabbed her around the waist, and yanked her towards him, "You kiss the ground I walk on."

"Do not!"

He tickled her, causing Chiyoko to screech protest between gales of laughter, and Jessica to grin and move out of the way. "Do too!"

"Do," she gasped, "not!"

"Say it!"

"I'll not! Kenshin," she giggled helplessly for a second, sucked in a deep breath, and then said, "Make him ... make him ... stop!"

Kenshin, lips twitching in amusement, said to Jessica, "Kenji's ticklish too."

"Am not!" Kenji said, alarmed -- just as Jessica ambushed him from behind with long, agile fingers. He screeched, let go of Chiyoko, tried to stand up, then winced, "My leg! Owe!"

"Oh, poor baby," Jessica patted him on the top of the head. "You had that coming, and you know it."

He stuck his tongue out at her.

Chiyoko, who had retreated across the room, folded her arms, summoned her dignity, and said, "One might observe that one has to sleep sometime, and this humble samurai-girl can move very silently these days."

"Crap," Kenji said. "Now I think I'm in for some insomnia."

Kaoru arrived at that moment, tugged along by Yukio, who a grip on her hand and was trying to run ahead of her. "I found her! I found her!"

"Good job, Yukio, good job!" Kenji said, giving the boy far more praise than the task had really deserved -- likely because it was entertaining to see the way that Yukio beamed in delight at Kenji's approving words. Chiyoko might deny hero worship, but Yukio was another story entirely.

Yukio let go of Kaoru's hand, ran across the room, and scrambled into Kenji's lap. Kenji winced a bit but said nothing, simply arranging the child so that no weight was on his injured leg.

"You wanted me?" Kaoru said. Her hands were damp and she had flour on her clothes. Kenshin winced to think that she'd been helping out in the kitchens -- he hoped they'd been supervising her well enough to avoid any disasters!

"Yeah, I wanted to talk to all four of you," Kenshin indicated Jessica, Kenji, and Chiyoko.

Chiyoko gave him a surprised look, perhaps a little confused at being included in a discussion with Kenji and Kaoru -- but he'd thought about it a bit and had decided she was old enough and the decisions made here would have a profound affect on her life. She had a right to have a say.

She asked, "This is about where we go from here, isn't it?"

"Aa. I've already talked to Kaoru about it." He had discussed this with her in private last night, after another day spent clearing the remnants of the dojo; they'd come to a personal agreement that neither of them were thrilled with, but they both felt was best. She stood beside him now. He wasn't usually one to be physically affectionate in public with Kaoru, but he reached out and squeezed her fingers. He was glad for her support.

Kenji glanced at Jessica. Jessica said nothing, but the look they exchanged was significant. Kenshin couldn't read what they were thinking, except that Kenji had lifted an eyebrow and Jessica had nodded, so they agreed on something.

Kenshin sighed. "We have two choices. We can move elsewhere in Japan and try to live undercover and pray that nobody recognizes me. Alternately, we can leave the country entirely for a period of time and return when my identity as myself has become so improbable that _no one _will believe it."

Jessica sat down on a chair. Yukio promptly scrambled into her lap; she wrapped her arms around him and said quietly, "Kenshin, how likely do you think you are to be recognized?"

"How common is red hair in Japan?" He replied, sitting down on the floor. "I'm not likely to be recognized as Hitokiri Battousai -- few knew me as that even during the revolution. Even most of the men I stayed with in Kyoto didn't know my real identity as a hitokiri. That was to protect me; I was valuable, and our enemies would have stopped at nothing to kill me if they knew who I was. There are those who will remember the boy, but few who knew the hitokiri.

"But as Himura Kenshin -- yes, many knew me. I wandered for ten years, Jessica ... and I like to think I made an impression along the way. My appearance is very distinctive, and those who meet me _remember _me. At one point or another I visited every corner of this country."

"We could still try it -- find some small village somewhere, start over," Kaoru said, quietly. "But a village small enough and remote enough to be safe will be a difficult place to raise six children. We will end up very poor, and probably very isolated."

Kenshin grimaced. At least they'd agreed on that point. "Small remote villages tend to be insular and clannish. They won't readily accept outsiders. Particularly ..." he gestured at his hair, "... outsiders who seem different."

"One option I suggested to Kaoru," Kenshin continued, "Was that she and the children take up residence in a large city -- perhaps Kyoto, as we have friends there. I would work elsewhere, and only come home secretly ..."

"No!" Kaoru made a slashing motion through the air. "I won't have that."

Kenshin lifted a hand in acknowledgement of her protest. "Oro, Kaoru, I just want them to know what we've considered."

"Which leaves emigrating," Kenji said, sounding tired, "As really the only option."

Jessica said quietly, "I can help ..."

"We'll find a way to make a living," Kenshin said, firmly, "We'll _not _be a burden on you. But ..."

"Perhaps a loan," Kaoru said, sounding almost timid -- a tone of voice that Kenshin had very rarely heard out of her. "We'll pay it back, Jessica-san, but we may need the money."

Jessica smiled gently. "Kaoru, I'd rather give you a gift than a loan. And I. Can. Afford. It." She gestured at the house with a swish of her hand, growing more animated as she spoke. "I haven't told you the extent of my wealth because it was never relevant to my friendship with you or with Kenji ..." She smiled at him. Kenji gave her a confused look. She shrugged at Kenji. "It's been a remarkable experience to be loved for who I am rather than to be courted by inbred idiots who are more interested in my fortune. However -- I'm wealthy enough that money is no issue to me. I would never miss it and I would be most pleased to help you. -- My concern, however, with you emigrating to Britain is that you may find it a very different culture and a very alien one. And you will not find it a welcoming country."

She shook her head. "There are many things alike between our worlds and many things which are very, very different."

She was silent for a moment. "I might suggest that you leave Japan as a trial, with the intent of returning here if you find Britain not to your liking ... I'll pay for passage both ways, if that is the case."

"We'll not be a burden," Kaoru said, shaking her head firmly.

Jessica nodded. "You would never be a burden to me, but I understand that you both value being self-sufficient. So. How quickly do the two of you think you could learn English?"

Kenshin blinked at that. "I've never attempted to learn a foreign language, but I will certainly try."

Kaoru nodded. "Hai. We can learn. And Kenshin can do _anything _he puts his mind to."

"So." Jessica nodded. "The trading company that I own has numerous routes throughout Asia. I could _very much _use both of you -- and Chi-chan and Kenji -- for translating things and speaking to Japanese employees and merchants. And auditing books, as well, that are written in Japanese. Believe me, you will be both useful and busy. I only worry that you will be unhappy and find it isolating in England."

"No less isolating than here, now," Kenshin said, quietly. He glanced at Kaoru, who returned his expression with a tight-lipped smile that said she was very, very unhappy. He wanted to draw her into his arms and hold her -- he'd do so later, but not here, in public.

Jessica sighed. "I need to return home. I've left the company in the hands of my managers but it's time I checked on things personally."

"It's certainly an interesting offer," Kenshin said carefully, "But I speak no English now."

She held a hand up. "Start learning. Today. I _trust _you, which is most important, Kenshin. You're like the father I always wanted. I need people I can trust around me. Your integrity and honesty -- Kenshin, that's a rare thing in the world I come from. And something I value very highly."

Kenshin nodded. "I would never betray you in any way, Jessica."

Kenji cleared his throat. "So it's decided, then?"

"Chiyoko?" Kenshin glanced at her. "You get a say in this as well."

"I speak the language well enough." Chiyoko said, in a tone that indicated she wasn't very concerned about the matter. "I'm curious about England given I _see _it in my dreams sometimes. I can always come home later -- it's not like I won't have time. But ..." she stared at her bare feet. "But there's one thing ...

"Oh, the boy," Kaoru's grin was positively impish. "You're thinking of a certain cute boy, perhaps?"

"Aa," Chiyoko didn't blush, "He'll be all alone."

"I wouldn't worry too much about that. Yahiko and I have already had a talk." Kenshin said, with a lifted eyebrow at Kaoru. He'd discussed this matter with her as well, inasmuch as he'd had to -- Kaoru had not hesitated to agree that Yahiko's son had a place with them. And both of them had no illusions about the likelihood of avoiding a war with Russia. Neither of them wanted to see Shinya end up on a battlefield somewhere.

He glanced at Jessica and said carefully, "Do you have any issues with us adding one more to our group?"

"Who, Shinya?" Jessica said, without hesitation. "He's a good kid. Very intelligent. And I think Chiyoko has a crush on him ..."

If she was trying to embarrass Chiyoko, it didn't work. Chiyoko grinned broadly. "I _do _like Shinya. And I think he'll be happy to come with us."

"Well, that's all decided then," Kenji said. He stood up, wincing a bit, and limped over to the library desk where he picked up a nondescript wooden box.

Kenshin recognized the box and gave Kaoru a puzzled look -- and realized that Kaoru's eyes were positively gleaming. Her focus was totally on Kenji.

_The box must have been in his studio with his art, _Kenshin realized, very relieved that these sentimental treasures had not been harmed by the fire. Most of Kenji's artwork had survived as well, and it was now packed up in trunks safely in his room upstairs.

Kenji opened the box and said, "This is all I have of my real parents, Jessica. A bible, a locket, and some jewelry. Rings from my mother and father both. I understand that the English custom is to offer a woman a ring if you wish to marry her?"

Jessica grinned suddenly. Her face simply lit up, in a way which as utterly indescribable. Kaoru, behind her, covered her mouth with her hand and uttered a muffled shriek. Chiyoko giggled. Yukio cheered, though Kenshin was reasonably sure his youngest son had no idea what he was shouting about.

"I'm not sure if this is the right sort of ring, but I'd be honored if you would wear it, and marry me ..." he handed her a smaller box, shyly.

Jessica opened the box. A simple gold band, inset with one sparkly clear stone the size of a pea, lay on a bit of fabric inside. She pulled it out, tried it on, determined it fit perfectly, and murmured, "Oh, _yes_."

Kenji wrapped his arms around her and kissed her soundly, then held her longer. "I love you, Jessica Marshall. Gods, I love you _so much_."

"Believe me, the feeling's most mutual," she sounded a bit breathless after that kiss.

Kenshin said gravely, "Welcome to the family, Jessica."

"Lemme see! Lemme see!" Yukio tugged at her hand.

Jessica stepped back from Kenji -- he kept a hand on the small of her back with an almost possessive air -- and she lowered her fingers so the child could look at the ring. She tousled his hair tolerantly. "Guess you get to be my brother-in-law, brat."

Then she frowned at the ring and pulled it back off her finger and looked at it closer.

"I know it's probably just glass," Kenji said, apologetically. "But I couldn't have afforded a proper ring and I thought it was fitting you'd have my real mother's ..."

Jessica pulled the desk drawer open, shuffled through the contents, and produced a magnifying glass. She carried ring and magnifying glass to the window and held it up to the light and inspected it carefully. "No, no, it's real. That's a _big _diamond, Kenji."

"Really? I always thought it was just a fake stone. It's too bright to be real," he scoffed. "You should see the one I'm going to give you for a wedding ring, unless you want something else ... It's got a stone twice that size in it."

"May I?" She said, hesitantly. "May I look at them?"

"Sure." He handed her the wooden chest.

She set it down on the desk and fished out the jewelry -- two other rings, one a man's wedding ring and the other a woman's, and a locket, and a pair of earrings. She carried them all back to the window. "My mother loved jewelry, but she got taken a few times by dishonest jewelers. I made a point of learning about jewelry after she spent several thousand pounds on a bit of glass once." Jessica sounded annoyed at that memory. "This," she held up the ring he'd offered her for the engagement, "Is about a five carat white diamond. It's worth a _lot _of money, and is not something I'd expect just anyone to be wearing."

"It's still yours now," Kenji said, faintly. "The money isn't important to me."

She grinned. "Let's look at the rest of this ..."

The man's wedding ring had a large diamond in it as well. The woman's wedding ring had a diamond equivalent to the engagement ring, but she said, "It's a much nicer stone. I don't think it's very much bigger, but it's more sparkly because of the way it's cut. These are very expensive jewels, Kenji. I can't believe you've just had these sitting in a box. You'll have to forgive me, but I won't be wearing this on my hand in public -- if you don't mind, I'll wear it on a chain around my neck where nobody can _see _it."

"That's fine," Kenji said, blinking a bit. He understood suddenly that wearing a ring that flashy might actually put her in danger.

She gave him a sideways look. "Though I _will _wear it to any society functions I get dragged into. -- Anyway, the earrings are emeralds and they're about ten carats each. _Very very _expensive, Kenji. The locket ... it's gold, and the little stones set in it are also emeralds. They match the earrings."

She popped the locket open and went silent. After a long, long moment, she said, "This is your father and mother?"

"Yes," Kenji said. "

She laughed, suddenly. She wasn't looking at the name but rather the initials etched inside the locket. It was an ironically amused laugh. "Kenji, love, I wish you'd shown me this sooner."

"Aa?"

"See the letters J.T. and J.R?"

"Those are letters? I thought they were just a pretty design," Kenji said.

"They're very stylized. I'm not surprised you didn't recognize them as writing. They're your parents initials, I think." She walked back to the box and picked the bible up. "Kenji, I think I know _who _you are. The letters stand for Lord John Trevor -- that would be your father -- and your mother, Josephine Russell."

She pointed a finger at him, "And you, Kenji, are little Lord Alastair Trevor."

Kenji sat down on a chair. "Are you sure of this? How -- how do you know who I am?"

She flipped the bible open, paged through it, and found what Kenji had always taken to be a fancy bit of artwork inside the front. "This is your family's name in calligraphy, Kenji." Carefully, she shut the bible and handed it back to him. "It's been in here all along."

"It doesn't matter," Kenji shook his head suddenly. "Kenshin and Kaoru are my parents. They raised me -- they l-love me. My real parents died a long time ago."

Kenshin said quietly, "Kenji, it's not disloyal to us to want to know about your birth family. And to tell the truth, I'm curious what they are like. He does have other relatives?"

Jessica had a very odd expression on her face. "Oh, yeah, he has other relatives."

"Well, then, since we're going to Britain anyway we ought to seek them out." Kenshin nodded happily. "I'm sure they will be happy to know that Kenji's alive and well. They certainly had to love the little boy that he was, long ago."

"Err." Jessica said.

"Is something wrong?" Kaoru asked.

Jessica sat down too, on the arm of the chair that Kenji was sitting in. "Umm. Sorry. I just had my whole world view upended. Give me a minute here. Because the love of my life asks me to marry him, and you have to understand that I've spent my entire life swearing I'd never marry for money, and it turns out he's the heir to one of the largest international fortunes in the world and he's of the," she used the English word, not knowing the Japanese equivalent, "the peerage."

"Umm?" Kenji said, baffled.

"Suffice to say _money _isn't going to be any problem for you. When Viscount Russel Trevor passes away you're first in line to inherit after your parents as you're the eldest -- that's been gossip for years because he has refused to change his will -- he insists that his son and daughter-in-law and grandson are still alive somewhere." Jessica snorted a laugh. "He's one third right, amazingly. Fratricide, however, might be a possibility. You've got brothers and they're _not _going to be happy to hear you're alive."

She hesitated, then added, "You'd be considered a lord -- I used the English word, but I guess the Japanese equivalent would be _daimyo_. You've noble rank, Kenji. Your grandfather was made a Viscount by Queen Victoria, if I remember my politics correctly."

Kenji shook his head. His response made Kenshin proud; Kenshin felt pretty much the same way. "I don't care about money, or rank, other than that I not _starve _to death ..."

"... something he worries about a lot ..." Chiyoko put in, suddenly, earning a laugh all around. Kenji's appetite was proportionate to his size.

"... Chi-chan, I think I liked you better when you were too scared to sass," Kenji said, mock-menacingly. He raised his fist at her. "Do I need to scare you again, imoto?"

She cringed away from him, and squealed, "Eeek! I'm soooo scared!"

"And you can't act for crap, either," he pointed out.

"Oh, she can act," Kenshin said, a smile flashing across his face. He shook his head, however -- that was a funny story for another day. "Kenji, Jessica, I am _very _glad you are officially betrothed now. If you allow your love for each other to lead you, handling the rest will be easy."

Jessica beamed at him, then at Kenji. Kenji suddenly caught her around the waist and swept her off the arm of the chair into his lap and kissed her soundly. She returned his embrace for an enthusiastically long moment, then suddenly pushed back and said, "Oh, God, your leg!"

"Don't worry about my leg," Kenji said. He blushed when he added, "For a moment there, with you in my arms, _I _forgot about it entirely."

The rest of the family laughed.

Jessica stood up and walked over to the desk. She sat down and pulled stationary and an ink pot, blotter, and pen out of a cubby. "Do you care if I send a cable to my mother? I know from gossip that Viscount Trevor's son, daughter in law, and eldest boy went missing on a business trip to Asia, but I'd like to get the details from her."

"Sure. I'm madly curious, now. Are you sure I'm really some sort of lord, though?"

"Yeah, pretty sure." Jessica paused, then snickered suddenly. "My uncle might finally approve of you, Kenshin. And my mom's never going to believe that I'm marrying a lord."

She hesitated, then her grin broadened. "Oh, the two of us are going to have _fun _with the society idiots!"

"Aa?" Kenji said, curiously.

A purely devilish light touched Jessica's eyes. She said, "If people think you're some sort of commoner who was raised in Japan, they're going to be uncommonly rude and cruel to you. Particularly those who had designs on my fortune for either themselves or their sons. It'll be most entertaining watching their reactions when they learn the truth. Oh, this is going to be _fun_."

"You have unusual definitions of fun," Kenji told her.

"Oh, yes, and you love me for it. Admit it."

"Well, yes," he laughed, a look of amusement very close to hers slowly reaching her eyes. "I do love your sense of humor."

-----------

(1) Actually, this author belatedly remembered that Chiyoko commented, "I think I know English now," after killing the Immortal.


	43. Chapter 43

-1Chapter 43

---------------------------

Author's note: I may use some terms for asians that would be considered offensive here and there by today's standards, when I'm in the point of view of British Victorian-era character. I waffled between being politically correct and historically correct and decided to go for a middle ground..

--------------------------

The air was foul.

Kenshin hunched down into his overcoat, shivering, as a damp rain trickled dispiritedly from the sky. The air smelled of sewage and smog and too many unwashed people packed too closely together and it bothered him. The worst part was the 'unwashed people' ... there was sickness in the city often and he suspected much of it had to do with the lack of hygiene by the city's inhabitants. Didn't they know that filth led to disease?

Well, they did, he'd learned, and there were efforts to improve cleanliness, and apparently things had been much worse once. But still, the _dirtyness _of the city had been an unpleasant surprise.

The long overcoat, a bulky, itchy garment, was necessary both to conceal his sword (strapped diagonally across his back) and as proof against the miserable weather. A hat kept the rain out of his face, but some still trickled down his back. His English style trousers bothered him; the wool itched and he felt odd without the comfortable and utilitarian hakama that he'd worn for most of his life.

On the other hand, he could pass for English, as long as he didn't open his mouth. The first day here, he'd changed his clothing to blend in, valuing the protection of his family over a personal statement. He'd learned that he could pass for European on the boat ride over, and British if nobody heard him mangling the language -- and he had very quickly learned that keeping his mouth shut was the best way to avoid trouble.

Britons tended to guess his age very low; he wasn't sure if it was his lack of height or his clear skin and absent facial hair, but they often thought him no older than twelve or thirteen. He'd considered growing a mustache -- he knew he couldn't manage a beard, because he'd tried a few times to hide his scar -- and Kaoru had laughed so hard at the suggestion of _mustache _that she'd snorted tea out her nose. The words, "Take a photograph and send it home ..." had been barely audible among her helpless giggles.

Now, on the street, the guttural sounds of English swirled around him, barely understandable at best. Vendors barking wares, pedestrians yammering at each other, a police officer yelling at a scraggly boy wearing dirty clothes too thin for the weather and running for all his might with a loaf of bread clutched to his chest -- he didn't have to understands the words completely to find the street life oddly familiar. Some things were universal.

Japan, of course, had more than its share of poverty and street urchins and impoverished, disease-ridden poor. England wasn't too different on that account; it seemed some things were universal. But his impression was that it was worse here. Perhaps poverty was complicated by the weather, which had been unremittingly cold and foul in the four days since he'd arrived.

Kenshin lengthened his stride, hurrying home, inasmuch as Jessica's London townhome was _home_. He'd gone out simply to explore -- the wanderer in his soul was called by the exotic foreignness of this new land. But he found himself worrying about his family.

He'd been walking for hours, covering miles of city. Retracing his route was simple enough -- he'd made note of the twists and turns his travels had taken -- and he eventually reached the wealthy neighborhood where Jessica owned a vertical, four-story home that stood cheek to jowl with a whole block of similar homes, all inhabited by very wealthy families. The townhome was enormous, but, she'd explained, not the largest nor by far her only home in Britain. She had multiple country manors, preferring to avoid the nasty miasma of the city as much as possible.

But she'd been away for well over a year and it would take time to open up one of the country manors and hire staff to run it. _Hiring staff _seemed alien to him -- he understood the need for a few servants, but she spoke as if she needed an army of people.

Her butler -- a middle aged man who towered over Kenshin and who almost never smiled -- opened the front door as he approached. The man said something that Kenshin didn't quite catch.

"I'm sorry, I didn't understand ..." _Those _words he'd learned weeks ago, memorized, and put to good use.

The butler repeated himself, louder.

"I'm sorry ..."

"He's just wanting to know where you were," Chiyoko said, coming down the stairs.

He glanced up at her. She was dressed Western style -- she'd insisted on it, wanting to fit in -- with a fitted bodice and loose skirt. She was barefoot, though; the Britons found the whole family's habit of removing shoes at the door odd.

Given how cold the house tended to be, Kenshin was starting to see the point of wearing shoes inside for comfort's sake. It was little details that sometimes drove home how different this land was.

"I am ... walking ..." he sat down in a chair by the door and yanked his boots off. He had tabi on in lieu of western style socks -- simply because they hadn't had a chance to purchase socks yet -- and he left the split socks on against the chill.

"... dangerous ..." the butler said, among other words. Kenshin knew the word _danger_, so he assumed _dangerous _had a similar meaning.

Chiyoko answered before he could, with a peal of laughter. She said something that made the butler scowl, but Kenshin only understood one word, the man's name, _Jeffrey_. She added to Kenshin, "I _was _walking. You need to use the past tense."

"I _was _walking," he repeated dutifully.

"For hours?"

"Four? No, maybe six or seven. I left very early," he replied.

"_For _hours ... oh, nevermind." She shook her head, leaving him mystified where he'd gone wrong with the language this time.

"How do you say ... exploring? ..." He asked, in Japanese.

"_Exploring_," she provided the word. "Say, _I was exploring_."

"_I was exploring ... city?_"

"I was exploring _the city_."

Dutifully, he repeated that. It was difficult to form his mouth around the alien words; the foreign rhythms to it made his jaw ache.

She grinned and nodded her head. "Your accent's pretty good. You just need to work on your vocabulary ..."

"I'm not sure I'll ever be fluent, Chi-chan. This is harder than I thought it would be."

"You're doing great. You only started learning two months ago." She frowned, then added, "You might want to be careful, Kenshin-papa. It's dangerous out there."

"No worse than Japan is, for me. I can handle criminals and it's very difficult to give much offense simply by walking down the street and looking about." With a hint of dark irony, he said, "What's the worst that could happen -- I get killed?"

"You could run into another Immortal," Jessica pointed out from the top of the grand staircase. She descended it quickly, holding her skirts up with one hand. "I received a message from Russell Trevor today."

"Aa?" Kenshin said, perking up. Jessica had written him a letter simply asking to see him regarding news of his grandson, and explaining she'd just returned from Japan. The letter had been perfectly truthful in indicating that she may have accidentally turned up information about Alastair Trevor's fate.

What they weren't telling the old man -- he was in his seventies -- was that they planned to surprise him by showing up with Kenji with them. Jessica was concerned that there might be trouble from Kenji's brothers -- who had reputation for being cutthroat in both business and family relations -- if word reached them of Kenji's existence.

"He's offered to meet with us immediately, as soon as we can get there -- he's got a country manor half a day away," Jessica said, with a grin. "He said he would see us there. I'm having my carriage brought around. You might want to change into something dryer and pack a change of clothing. Kenji's changing now, as well."

That would explain why she was wearing a particularly formal dress. Kenshin nodded, "I'll go change. I'm sorry, I wasn't expecting such an immediate response from him. This one hopes he didn't cause a delay by his wandering."

"It's okay, I didn't expect him to send a note to requesting to meet us right now either. And apparently his son's fate has been something of an obsession for Lord Trevor for years. My name is well known." She sounded smug. "I've met Lord Trevor a few times and I do like him, though I can't say much for Kenji's brothers!"

--------------------

The country manor that Jessica had mentioned was enormous -- it was a huge, brooding home on a hill, gothic in appearance. Kenshin found it dark and foreboding.

Kenji looked out the window over his head and then went very, very still. Any doubt that Kenshin might have had about his son's birthright was quelled when he said, "I've been here before. I remember ..." his face screwed up in concentration. "I remember ... I remember being scared, and alone, and nobody coming for me."

Kenshin said quietly, "Remember that whatever happens, Kenji, Kaoru and I will always love you."

"There's no doubt about that!" He barked a surprised laugh. "I'm not sure I could go through with this if you two and Jessica weren't coming along. I want to know about my birth family, but they're not really my _family_, if you know what I mean."

Jessica's driver stopped the carriage in the front door and Jessica -- who had always opened the door herself and bounced out in Japan -- sat quietly in the seat until the footman opened the door. He offered her his hand and helped her out, then did the same with Kaoru. After Kenji and Kenshin had also gotten out, the footman hopped up on the back of the carriage and the driver drove away, disappearing around a corner of the building.

A well-dressed man appeared almost out of nowhere. He said something that Kenshin didn't catch except for, "_Miss Marshall_ ..."

"Jonathon," Jessica said, by way of greeting, with a bit of a smile. "This is Kenshin and Kaoru Himura, and Kenji Himura, and they've come back with me from Japan."

Kenshin understood most of that.

Jonathon's eyebrows rose. "From Japan?" he murmured, staring up at Kenji.

------------

Kenji watched his father covertly out of the corner of his eye as they entered the great hall. Knowing that Kenshin had his sword slung over his shoulder was a bit of a relief -- though it was remarkable how well hidden it was. Kenshin couldn't do the sword-what-sword? trick that Chiyoko did with such skill, but Kenji was amazed at how hard it was to tell that Kenshin was armed.

Perhaps a bit of magic after all, or just careful rigging of the sword harness and a loose fitting overcoat. He wasn't sure.

The building ... scared him. Dark memories were surfacing, of hiding, and beatings, and pain. Ever since he was a little boy he'd hated being alone. He'd been _alone _here. He remembered being curled in a dark place and listening as people searched for him, and being terrified he would be found.

It made him want to run to Kenshin and Kaoru like he was still that small boy, and seek safety in their arms.

Firmly, he told himself he was a grownup, and he could face any trouble that came without their help.

His grandfather Trevor's secretary, Jonathon, lead the way up a gloomy hall that was poorly lit by high windows and dankly drafty. The walls were paneled in dark wood, and there were oversized paintings of ancestors in ornate frames. _Bad _paintings -- but the thought of painting people made him itch to get his watercolors out. He had a mischievous urge to capture an image of Kenshin in western garb; he was reasonably sure that Kenshin wasn't aware of how ... silly ... he looked dressed as a gaijin. He might make more than one painting, and send a copy to Yahiko as well as keeping one for himself.

His mother looked ... well, different, but not as ridiculous as Kenshin did. She seemed to like the swishy skirts and fitted bodices that Jessica had bough for her, though Jessica had giggled a bit when Kaoru had commented that she'd be able to fight better in a western skirt than she would in a kimono. Kenji suspected that Kaoru's easy adoption of western clothing had more to do with her adventurous streak than it did with fighting ability. She was very non-traditional, quite curious, and quite open-minded.

And she'd made it clear that someday, she would go home. She wasn't abandoning her heritage, she was just playing dress-up with foreign clothes.

Kaoru's English was a bit better than his father's, as well -- her accent was thicker, but her vocabulary was much broader. He suspected she understood more than she said, now.

_As for me, I knew this language once. It comes back as if I merely needed reminding._

The secretary kept giving him decidedly _odd _looks. Kenji suspected the man had jumped to a very logical conclusion. Still, when they reached the top of a flight of stairs and turned a corner and came face to face with his twin, it was a stunning shock to Kenji. He'd never seen a man his own height, with red hair to match his own.

"Oro!" Kenshin said, behind him.

"Hello, William," Jessica said, coolly, to this apparition.

Kenji blinked, and realized they didn't actually look much alike at all. The other man was actually about two inches shorter than he was. His skin was sallow and heavily scarred by acne. His teeth, when he opened his mouth, showed ample signs of decay, with several blackened or chipped. His red hair stuck greasily to his head and was cut short. He needed a bath in a desperate way, judging by the sour smell that radiated from him. And he was ... soft. Overweight, a bit, with a belly that folded over his belt. He carried himself like a man who was not in good physical shape.

"Jessica!" William said, in marked surprise. "Did you come to see me? I'd hoped you would ..."

Jessica drew back a step. "I'm actually here to see your grandfather on personal business, William. Will you let us pass?"

"Who are these people?" William ignored her request. "Odd company you're keeping."

"Kaoru-san and Kenshin-san are friends of mine from Japan, and Kenji is my fiancé," she rested her hand on Kenji's arm.

He wanted to say, "Hey! You're my brother!" to this man. But they had agreed to approach Lord Trevor first -- particularly since, by all accounts, his grandfather had never given up hope. It was right that he knew first.

"Your. Fiancé." William sounded dismayed. He grabbed her wrist, yanked her hand to his mouth, and gave her a somewhat clumsy kiss on the back of the fingers. "You could have had a nobleman, Jessica!"

"Who, you?" She scoffed, reclaiming her hand and wiping it on her skirt. Kenji was peripherally aware that Kenshin had tensed and stepped away from the others, likely so he could draw his sakabatou in the clear if he had to. _That _would be a disaster if he really did pull his sword -- but likely, that was just Kenshin's hitokiri instincts coming into play. He was leaving violence as an option if this man didn't leave Jessica alone.

"At least give me one more chance!" William wailed, sounding to Kenji's ears like he was much younger than his apparent age -- which was a few years younger than Kenji, but not many.

Kenji said quietly, but with menace, "Jessica loves me. And I love her. And if you touch her again, I will _hurt _you."

"Do you have any idea who you are speaking to, foreigner?" He puffed up, outraged. "I'll have you thrown out! And just what sort of an accent is that, anyway?"

Jessica snorted a laugh. "William, you might find out who _you _are speaking to first. Come, Kenji, he's all hot air."

She brushed past him.

William stuck his shoulder out as Kenji passed so that Kenji ran into it, and hissed very close to Kenji's face, "What do you have that I _don't_?"

Kenji replied, "Jessica."

He then hurried to catch up to Jessica and said, low, "You never told me my brother was your suitor."

"He's not. He's just a pig. He hits on all the women like that." Jessica shook her head. "He's something of a joke. No woman of any breeding would have him unless she were truly desperate. I have a hard time believing the two of you are related."

"So do I," Kenji said, honestly. He wished she'd said something about this man before -- but perhaps she'd wanted him to draw his own conclusions first.

The secretary led them into a solarium filled with greenery and wicker chairs. Kenji felt some of the tension leave his body at the welcome beauty of the plants, and the soft rush of warm air. He hadn't been _warm _since they'd left Japan.

An old man sat in a chair. He saw them coming and stood up.

He'd been very tall, once, and still stood taller Jessica. But he was stooped, shoulders bent, back a bit crooked with age. The top of his head would reach Kenji's nose, Kenji thought. He had a hint of blond left in his greying, balding hair, and a palsy in one hand.

And the blue eyes that Kenji found studying him were keen and clear and the exact shade of Kenji's own. They shot back to Jessica after a moment's steady regard. "You said you had news of my grandson in the message you sent?"

And again, the man stared at him. This time, there was a hint of sharp suspicion and skepticism.

Kenji reached up and pulled his mother's locket from under his shirt. He unclipped the clasp and wordlessly handed it to his grandfather. That cynical look changed to one of soft, simple wonder in a heartbeat.

The old man tried to fumble the locket open with shaking hands, then shook his head, frustrated. "I know what's in here. Your father gave your mother this locket as a wedding gift. There were earrings to match it."

"They're dead, I'm sorry," Kenji said, reluctantly imparting bad news to this elderly man. He took the locket back, opened it, and showed the man the small photograph of his parents. Lord Trevor did not try to reclaim it a second time. "It was influenza, twenty years ago. They died in a clinic run by a friend of my parents -- the parents who adopted me and raised me."

His grandfather spoke very carefully, "I have feared these many years to hear such words. It is perhaps fitting that I hear this from you, however."

He blinked hard, twice. "I suppose if they lived, they _would _have contacted me." Gnarled hands grasped his arms and pulled him into an embrace. The man smelled of liniment and cologne ... Kenji was startled to find that the scents triggered memories from the past, of being hugged just like this before. This man, his grandfather, had been a safe harbor. The fear that he would find his own flesh and blood wholly distasteful faded. His younger brother William hadn't left him with the best first impression, but his grandfather was different.

The man stammered, "You are ... I always knew you were alive, Alastair. Y-you were just a sweet child. You were always my favorite. And you look so much like your mother!"

Kenji hugged him back, then said firmly, "I don't want to be your favorite -- I'm sure you love my brothers too. But I would like to know you ..." he paused, struggling to find the words. "Forgive my difficulties, I'd forgotten English and Jessica has been teaching it to me anew."

"Jessica Marshall," Lord Trevor turned his attention to her with a vigorous wave of one hand, "Has anyone ever told you that you are a remarkable woman? I shall have to reward you appropriately for this!"

"No reward his necessary," Jessica said, with a laugh, "Finding Kenji -- Alastair -- was reward enough!"

"You are courting?" The man was sharply intelligent, Kenji decided.

"We are engaged to be married," Jessica said, with a most unladylike snort. "And I assure you, I said _yes _to him when I thought he was a penniless orphan boy -- with _very _good looks."

"Mmm. Foolish of you, perhaps, but I can see the merit in marrying for love."

"I don't want you to think," Kenji said, quietly, to his grandfather, "That I'm coming here looking for a share of a fortune, or power, or fame. I simply wanted to meet my birth family -- and we heard, from Jessica's mother, that you longed to know what happened. We thought you needed to know the truth so you would no longer wonder. It's been twenty years and doubtless my siblings have more claim on your family fortune and titles than I do. I do not _need _wealth which I have not honestly earned."

Lord Trevor was silent for a long, long moment. Then he snickered. "If you're marrying Jessica, it is I who should be asking _you _to rejoin the familyfor your share of _her _fortune. I know several of your brothers have attempted to court her for several years without success. Along with every other bachelor in Britain with an eye for her wealth! Fools, the lot of them."

Kenji wasn't sure if Trevor was serious or not, but Jessica apparently found this funny, because she laughed.

Kenji felt introductions were in order -- he could feel his parents being silently patient behind him, though Kaoru's form of patience involved a bit of fidgeting. "Lord Trevor, this is Kaoru Kamiya, the woman who adopted me ... and Shinta Kamiya."

_And I really hope he doesn't ask Kenshin's relationship to me before we know if we can trust him._ He didn't want to start off with a lie to his grandfather, but the truth was implausible at best and dangerous at worst for them. They'd learned that, the hard way.

"Another fosterling?" Lord Trevor asked, curiously.

"He's as dear to me as a brother," Kenji said, firmly, thinking, _Except he's my father_.

Not _quite _a lie.

Trevor sat down, suddenly, in one of the wicker chairs, and said, "Forgive me, this is a stunning shock. I'd hoped to hear that Jessica knew something, but to see you standing before me ... with that locket, with their picture in it ... Alastair, I always said they were alive, but to find I was both right and wrong ..."

Tears welled in his eyes. "You're making an old man cry!"

Wordlessly, Jessica handed him a handkerchief.

Kenshin said, quietly, in Japanese, "Does he believe you?"

"The locket was proof to him. And I think he wants to believe," Jessica murmured back, in the same language. She cleared her throat. "Lord Trevor, may we sit? I think we all have questions. We know nothing of how Kenji's parents ended up in Tokyo, and I'm sure you'd like to hear about his life."

"Yes, yes, sit." He gestured at the other chairs. "Draw them up. I cannot believe this has happened, after all these years. I prayed to God a miracle would happen, and He has delivered one."

--------------------

Lord Trevor watched the tall young man who was his long-lost grandson with amazement. So tall, so handsome, so hale. When he grinned, which was often, he displayed an even row of perfect white teeth. His skin was clear and smooth, tanned and unblemished.

The woman who'd raised him scarcely looked old enough; he put her age at thirty, then revised it upwards a bit, remembering that orientals didn't show their age as quickly as the British did. Forty. Maybe. _Maybe_. She looked and moved like she was much younger.

She was as quick to smile as Alastair was, though she hadn't said anything, and he assumed that neither she nor Shinta spoke much English because Jessica Marshall spoke to them in Japanese.

Kaoru Kamiya was a tiny woman, something particularly noticeable when she stood next to Alastair. Shinta, who Trevor assumed was either another orphan or a halfbreed that the woman had adopted as well, also had an easy grin ... but Trevor, who'd fought in a few wars, wasn't the slightest bit fooled.

Lord Trevor pegged Shinta for at least a decade older than his very youthful appearance. It was more in the way that he carried himself than anything else. It was very hard to make an accurate guess, but he thought the man was probably mid to late twenties in age.

Moreover, his hands were battered and scarred -- broken fingers, and old knicks and cuts, though none looked recent. They were the hands of a man who had either had multiple unfortunate accidents involving various sharp tools, or who had spent quite a bit of time holding a sword and occasionally getting whacked in the hand either in practice or combat. Trevor's own gnarled fingers bore similar damage.

There was an old samurai who worked for the Japanese minister -- a man often dispatched to Lord Trevor's manor on various bureaucratic missions generally involving begging for his vote -- who had similar fingers, and a similar stance and way of watching the world.

No, Trevor wasn't fooled at all. Shinta was no innocent boy.

But Alastair was clearly very, very fond of him. Their body language spoke of trust and affection between them. Moreover, Alastair clearly looked _up _to Shinta because Trevor had twice seen him glance in Shinta's direction, apparently seeking approval. _He sees him as an older brother, perhaps, if they were fosterlings together. Though he can't be much older._

Given the snake's nest of family politics that Alastair was about to find himself smack in the middle of, Trevor was rather glad that his grandson had someone like Shinta on his side. Shinta was even now glancing quickly around the room, with an almost instinctive survey for trouble. It didn't escape Trevor's notice that Shinta had positioned himself so he could see the door, as well; he'd carried a chair several feet to Trevor's other side.

He glanced at Alastair's hands, curiously, and saw that his grandson had a few scars of his own -- though nowhere near as many -- and heavy calluses. Hrm. He'd have to break out the old broadsword and have a go with the kid. Maybe at least _one _of his grandsons would know what to do with sharp and pointy things besides hang them on the wall and tell stories about them!

He surveyed all this in a few moments while Jessica interpreted Kaoru's story of finding Shinta. Jessica, speaking for Kaoru, said, "... my husband was helping at the clinic of a woman named Megumi, a good friend of ours. Kenshin," here both Kaoru and Alastair quickly glanced at Shinta, who pretended not to notice their looks, "... my husband brought the boy home when his parents died. We tried to find his family but had no luck. We notified the police, and the various embassies, but nobody ever claimed him."

Kaoru bowed her head. Then she spoke in halting English, "Lord Trevor, no children from Kenshin and I. Not ever. Kenji -- your Alastair -- he is our son. It is true. We love him. We raise him as our own."

Jessica put in, "He was only what, four? He didn't speak any Japanese and they didn't speak any English. By the time Kenji learned enough Japanese to talk to them, he'd forgotten his birth name and his parent's names."

"He would have been three, but very tall for his age," Trevor said. "I'm not surprised you thought he was older."

"I really _am _robbing the cradle," Jessica teased.

He smirked and said something in Japanese that set Jessica off into gales of laughter. Kaoru smacked him with an impatient open-handed swat and said something short, sharp, and very firm.

"Gomen nasai," Alastair said, apologetically, to his adopted mother. He ducked his head, abashed, then said to Lord Trevor, "She can still whip my butt with a shinai. I have to be careful, you know, and apologize ..."

"I _understood_ that!" Kaoru swatted him again.

He probably should have been scandalized by the thought of Alastair Trevor raised by a pair of orientals. On the other hand, Trevor was rather impressed by the boy on multiple levels. He was smart, polite, strappingly healthy, confident, and somehow _wholesome_ ... Lord Trevor reflected that first impressions, of course, could be wrong, but a long time ago, when he'd been a military man, he'd have been happy to have a boy like this serve under him. Abuse from his mother notwithstanding.

That wasn't something he could say about any of the other ninnies in the family.

Very ... interesting.

He wished he knew what had happened to Alastair's parents. There ship had been badly damaged in a storm, had sought shelter in the port at Yokohama, and from there, neither he nor Kaoru Kamiya knew how Alastair and his parents had ended up in Tokyo. He suspected they might never find the story there.

The door opened at that moment, admitting George Trevor, Alastair's older brother. George stalked across the solarium and said, "William said something about some foreigner threatening him!"

Alastair turned around, then rose, followed by the rest of his family. Lord Trevor remained seated. This was going to be interesting ...

"George, settle down," Lord Trevor said, shortly.

"That's the man that William said threatened him!" George pointed a finger at Alastair.

Alastair gravely inclined his head, "I am very sorry. Perhaps I spoke to hastily."

"You have a weird accent," George said, suspiciously. And rudely.

"It's Japanese," Trevor said, impatiently. "He's lived there since he was three."

There wasn't the slightest flicker of recognition from George. He simply said dismissively, "Well, he needs to leave now. Honestly, Father, I don't know why you would give an audience to foreigners like this. What is she, Chinese?" He indicated Kaoru with a flick of his fingers, "And Jessica Marshall! She's the biggest strumpet in the country!"

He grabbed for Alastair's arm. Tugged hard. Alastair didn't move. Instead, he said quietly to Jessica, "Is 'strumpet' an insult?"

Jessica replied in Japanese, apparently providing a definition.

"Come along, now. You're bothering an old man ..."George pulled insistently.

Trevor grinned when he saw Alastair's muscles bunch. Without any obvious effort, Alastair simply broke free. "I talking to Lord Trevor."

"And I'm throwing you out. Lord Trevor doesn't need to have visitors right now." George sounded profoundly unhappy that he'd been unable to move Alastair. George had a good fifty pounds on Alastair, and they were almost the same height -- but Lord Trevor thought his son had been spending too much time at the dinner table and not enough time doing healthy exercise. Alastair appeared to be a good bit more _solid _under his waistcoat and trousers.

"Oh, Lord Trevor was very happy to see this visitor," Lord Trevor said. "George, I'd like you to meet Kenji Himura, also known as Alastair Trevor. Alastair, this is George Trevor, your brother -- who, if I don't miss my guess, has had too many glasses of wine between lunch and dinner."

Silence from George. Then he scoffed, "Another imposter."

"Hardly. He has Josephine's locket."

"Josephine's locket." George echoed.

"The one she's wearing in the portrait in the library, if you care for proof."

"It could be faked."

"He's marrying Jessica Marshall," Trevor said, glancing at Jessica. Two angry spots of color were standing out on her cheeks. "You can deny him if you want, but I'm not."

Silence, from George. Calculating silence.

"Strumpet, hmm?" Jessica said, with a tight smile.

"I'm sorry," George said, stiffly, "Perhaps William earned the threat he received."

"Perhaps he did," Lord Trevor agreed.

"You're my ... brother," George met Alastair's eyes. Trevor saw fear there. _Good_, he thought. It was well-deserved fear. He was sick of these boys and their games.

Apparently, Alastair saw the fear too because he said calmly, "Yes, we are brothers. But I do not call myself Lord Trevor's heir. I wanted to meet all of you. Family is important."

The damndest thing was, Lord Trevor thought, this man sounded as if he was telling the truth. And he thought with utter relief and savage glee that he kept carefully schooled from his expression, _My boy, you may not claim your inheritance, but _I _claim _you

Alastair Trevor -- or Kenji, or whatever the hell he wanted to call himself -- couldn't possibly be worse than any of his three brothers. Trevor had an idea that he might well be an improvement.


	44. Chapter 44

Author's notes Yes, I know my language here isn't period or particularly British. Sigh. I'm doing my best.

And there's been a bit of a retcon -- if you read over the previous two chapters before April 1st, 2007 I have changed the following retroactively, because I, uh, did some research and realized I was way far off base. Anyway.

(1) Trevor is now Viscount Trevor. He has a secondary title of Baron Trevor, which would be Kenji's title until he inherited his grandfather's upon his grandfather's death. This hasn't been addressed yet in the story; it will be. (There was a real Baron Trevor but the line died out in the 1700's, according to wiki. Wiki is a dubious resource for research, but I'll accept that as good enough for fanfic and say this is a different family entirely.)

(2) Kenji is now the oldest son. His younger brothers (three of them) were left behind with a nurse but his parents took him with them as they intended to be away for a few years and he was his mother's favorite son and judged old enough for travel. He was also being harassed by an older cousin, who you will meet ... He was four, not three as previously stated. You have met the youngest (William, who would have been a few months old) and the second-eldest (George, who would have been three.) The middle brother, Byron, was not mentioned previously. Byron's gonna be fun. :-) Viscount Trevor has a whole 'nother reason for not liking Byron than 'stupid boor' and 'aggressive idiot', respectively, but Kenji, raised with Japanese sensibilities about certain things, ought to get along with Byron splendidly.

Sorry about this. One of the perils of writing organically rather than researching first and writing from an outline is discovering you screwed something up and have to fix it to make the story work ... I had originally planned on a much shorter series but Chi-chan's story has taken on a life of its own in my head and this section got seriously expanded. At around 90K words and with a good bit of story to go, this isn't the longest story I've ever written, but I believe it will turn out to be my longest fanfic ever.

------------------

Two weeks later, they moved to one of Jessica's country manors. It was an enormous building, and now Kenshin understood why she needed a small army of staff. Also, conveniently, it was only a few miles from Viscount Trevor's country estate. The Viscount had been away on business but was returning in two day's time; he had sent an invitation for Kenji to have lunch with him then.

"Wow, it's _splendid_!" Chiyoko breathed out, in excitement, staring out the carriage window over Iku's head.

"It's raining," Iku said, hunching down in the seat.

"Wet," agreed her brother.

"I like the mist," Chiyoko said, with a shrug. "It's romantic."

"Cold," Iku said.

"Wet," repeated Aki.

"Nasty," Iku agreed.

Kenshin supposed he should be glad that the _cold, wet, _and _nasty_ were all English words -- the children were learning English far faster than he was. _Learning English _had become a bit of a game between Shinya, and the younger children -- instigated by Shinya, who Kenshin was convinced was brilliantly intelligent -- and each tried to stump the other with vocabulary words.

Five year old Yukio was nearly as good at the game as Shinya, to Kenshin's surprise.

"At least it's not the city. You will be able to get out and run and play."

He was in the carriage with the children, mostly because he was the best at stopping a war from breaking out. Kaoru, at this point, was worse than useless -- he'd deliberately separated them under the guise of, "Why don't you ride with Jessica and practice your English?" because he was reasonably sure that Aki had been deliberately pushing her buttons out of pure boredom.

After having been cooped up for months on a ship, and weeks in the townhome, his children were short-tempered, cranky, and unusually troublesome. Kenshin knew this was because they were ferociously bored. Only Chiyoko remained her typical polite self. He was not surprised by any of this.

Even though her level temperament was not unexpected, he had pulled her aside and complimented her yesterday on that remarkable self-control after she'd made it through a particularly trying day of sibling rivalry without even raising her voice. In response she'd rolled her eyes and explained, "You have enough to deal with, without me adding to it. I'm old enough to be patient."

"I'm not sure _I'm _old enough to be patient," he had replied, letting some of his irritation with the kids -- particularly twelve year old Iku -- touch his voice.

Chiyoko had shrugged in response to that. "That's nothing a century or two won't fix, Kenshin-papa."

A second carriage, ahead, carried Kenji, Jessica, Kaoru and Shinya. More carriages behind carried Jessica's butler, Jessica's personal maid, her cook and his kitchen staff -- which Jessica was rather attached to, though Kenshin wasn't entirely fond of British cuisine and was ready to kill for a simple dish of grilled fish -- a couple of secretaries, and assorted important people in her company. She'd been away for a long time with her business trusted to those people, and now she wanted reports!

And there were many more members of her staff, many of whom had functions he didn't understand. Plus, he was given to understand, she had a large number of newly hired servants waiting for them at the house.

He prayed he remembered everyone's names; he'd been introduced to household staff, both new and old, and her employees, at a dizzying clip. English names were not easy to remember or pronounce.

The carriages rolled up to the manor, bumping over cobblestones. Those containing household staff continued on around to the back of the house -- he'd learned it wasn't considered appropriate for employees to enter the front door when Jessica's maid had mistaken him for a servant on the first day and yelled at him. Meekly, unsure of the language but clear on where she was pointing, he'd gone around to the back of the townhome and entered through the kitchen door -- where he'd promptly been scolded again by the cook, to whom he'd already been introduced. He'd had to track down Chiyoko and get her to translate before everything was sorted out.

The maid -- a matronly woman of 'good breeding' -- had been mortified, the cook had been amused at her expense, and Kaoru had found the whole matter hysterical when she heard later.

Once the carriage stopped, the kids tumbled out -- Iku and Aki both grumbling vociferously about the rain -- and Kenshin and Chiyoko followed. Servants carrying umbrellas had appeared to escort them inside. Kenshin found himself under an umbrella held by a skinny, freckled teenage boy with hair not too many shades different from his own.

It was cold. The carriage had a little stove in it that burned tiny amounts of coal -- enough to keep the carriage warm. The air outside was damp and chilly. Again he thought, _This is spring_?

A woman stood just inside the manor house door. She had blond hair shot through with grey, pulled back into a severe bun and she wore what Kenshin recognized (from observation of the wealthy ladies who'd come calling on Jessica) as a fashionable style of dress. Behind her, there was a pile of luggage that was swiftly being carried upstairs and out of sight by servants.

Emily Marshall, Kenshin guessed, Jessica's mother. His surmise was proven correct when Jessica saw her and exclaimed, "Mama!"

The two hugged only briefly. Mrs. Marshall looked embarrassed by the hug.

Kenshin followed Kenji through the door and watched in amusement as his son stared at his feet in shy silence. Jessica turned around after only a moment more of exchanging pleasantries with the mother she hadn't seen in years. She saw the look on his face, grinned, and said to her mother, "Mama, this is Alastair Trevor."

Chiyoko, next to Kenshin, translated for him in a low voice as they spoke.

"Lord Trevor." The woman surveyed him with keen eyes. "My daughter has spoken highly of you in her letters and cables to me. I am most pleased to hear you have breeding to match her good opinion of you."

"Mama!" Jessica protested. "You know I said yes to his proposal before I ever knew anything about him!"

"Still. I am certain his family has something to do with the intelligence and good manners that drew you to him," Emily Marshall said airily, "Blood does show, after all."

Kaoru, also listening to Chiyoko's translation, muttered in Japanese, "She obviously doesn't know the Trevor brothers."

Jessica shot Kaoru a look. Her lips twitched but she didn't actually smile. Instead she said, "I think that 'Lord Trevor' would rather be called Kenji -- or Kenji-san, if you wish to include a honorific. Kenji would be more intimate."

"Kenji-san," Mrs. Marshall murmured, politely.

"And this is Kenshin and Kaoru Himura -- Kenshin's like Uncle Marshall, mama. They adopted and raised Kenji in Japan."

Kenshin heard his real name and gave Jessica a keen look. There were no servants in ear-shot, however; they'd all disappeared, presumably on various errands. He hadn't discussed telling Emily Marshall his real identity -- on the other hand, the woman probably deserved to know the whole truth, and she obviously already knew about Immortals. Marshall was Jessica's great-grandfather's adopted brother on her father's side -- and apparently, by Jessica's words, her mother knew he was not mortal.

Mrs. Marshall gave him a keen look. "How old are you?"

He understood that question, to his relief, and decided for an honest answer. "Fifty-three. I am fifty-three years."

She frowned at him.

Jessica continued, "He's using the name Shinta Kamiya, and his wife is Kaoru Kamiya. Kenshin Himura is well known in Japan, and perhaps even beyond Japan to those who study politics and history, and there was ... trouble ... due to what he is. We've judged it best that they use an assumed name for now."

"I see."

"And this is Chiyoko -- Chi-chan -- she is their fosterling, and the rest of the children are Kenshin's nieces and nephews whom the Himuras have adopted. And this is Shinya, the son of an intimate friend of their family."

"Quite a large brood of little orientals. What are you going to do with them?" Emily Marshall's tone of voice was genuinely curious more than snide, despite her actual words. "They're darling children, Jessica."

Chiyoko translated _that _with a perfectly straight face and a perfect match of Mrs. Marshall's intonation. Chiyoko obviously thought she was being included in the _darling children_ category. Kaoru frowned intensely; Kenshin's worked hard at keeping his expression neutral.

"Mother!" Jessica said, a little sharply. "They're Kenji's family."

Mrs. Marshall made a casual gesture with her hand, waving away her objections. "I suppose a few more mouths to feed won't exactly strain your budget, but mind they don't cause trouble or a scandal. Of course, someone must supervise them. Perhaps a governess ... I know just the woman ..."

Kaoru, once Chiyoko had translated that, snapped in English, "I am _mother_. And he am _father_!"

"And," Kenji said, "a stern mother she is."

"I _understood _that!" Kaoru swatted him.

"It's true, mother. You are the mean one. Kenshin is much nicer." He ducked away from her second attempt at a smack and hid behind Jessica. Mrs. Marshall frowned slightly at the exchange.

"Kenshin has a philosophy of letting you learn from your own mistakes," Chiyoko explained. "Sometimes I almost prefer Kaoru-mama's approach. She's usually _right _when she tells you not to do something. Kenshin just says, 'Do you think you should do that?'" She paused, considered, then added, "Generally, the proper answer to that question from Kenshin is _No_."

"Wise child," Emily said. "So you listen to your elders?"

"Aaa. Yes. Unless I have a very good reason not to." Chiyoko's words were honest -- and, after she translated her own words into Japanese for him -- Kenshin couldn't think of many times when she hadn't done as told.

Mrs. Marshall's expression lightened a bit. "I wish my daughter had been like that."

"Mother!"

Chiyoko snickered. "I imagine Jessica would have said 'yes' quite a bit if Kenshin had asked her, 'Should you do that?' when she was little."

"Quite true," Mrs. Marshall smiled for the first time, as Jessica made an indignant noise.

"Chi-chan!" Jessica snapped, sounding irritated.

"What?" Chiyoko asked, sweetly. "Is it not true?"

"No!" Jessica denied.

"Maa, maa," Kenshin said, sensing an incipient fight. It wasn't just the children who had been rendered cranky by confinement and bad weather, and a fight between Chiyoko and Jessica, of all people, in front of Emily Marshall was definitely something he didn't want. Chiyoko would likely back down and apologize in a hurry, but not before a bad impression had been made. In Japanese, he suggested to Jessica, "Perhaps we should start unpacking. It will give everyone something to do."

"Let the servants do it, though you may supervise if you wish," Jessica said, quietly, subsiding.

He had not yet become used to being waited on -- likely, he thought, he never would. He started to protest, then reminded himself that this wasn't his world. Perhaps he would offend the servants by not allowing them to assist him, or offend Jessica.

"I'll have a maid show them to their rooms -- Bessie!" Mrs. Marshall raised her voice a bit and summoned a servant by name.

A girl about Chiyoko's age appeared promptly. She was thin, and had unusually bad teeth even by the local standards, but she grinned brightly anyway. "Yes, Mrs. Marshall?"

"Put the Himuras up in the East wing room on the end, and the children in the attic bedrooms. Lord Trevor shall have a room of his own in the West wing ..."

Jessica interjected gently, "Mother, I've already written ahead with directions to the servants about the rooms they will have. They're all staying in West wing rooms. The rooms should already be aired out and ready for their things."

Mrs. Marshall frowned. Kenshin suspected that the East wing rooms were not nearly as nice as the West wing rooms -- a supposition that was born out when she said, "I heard about that, and I had your orders changed. I'm sorry, my dear, but the scandal would be ferocious if you put orientals up in your best rooms. They can stay in the servant's wing. I'm sure they won't mind; I daresay the rooms will be better than what they're used to in Japan. You know how to those people live there, I'm sure."

Chiyoko translated this, adding, "Kenshin, doesn't she realize we're right in front of her?"

Kenshin said quietly, and with some dismay and a little carefully concealed irritation, "Tell Mrs. Marshall that we'll take the rooms. I don't want to make trouble for Jessica."

"Absolutely not!" Jessica snapped, before Chiyoko had a chance to respond. "Bessie, if the rooms aren't ready that I requested, please go have the staff get them ready now. In the meantime, I suppose we can sit down for lunch."

Bessie bobbed a curtsey and then fled, looking abashed.

"I'll ask you not to countermand my orders to my servants, Mother!" Jessica said, honest anger flashing to her face once the servant girl was out of earshot. Kenshin couldn't remember the last time he'd seen that particular expression of fury on Jessica's face.

"But ..."

"And I don't give a _damn_ about what people will say." Jessica stamped her foot, looking very childish. Kenshin was even more shocked by that. He didn't quite understand her words other than the profanity -- but her tone was outraged. "I don't!"

"Maa, maa," Kenshin said, holding his hands up and saying soothingly, "Jessica-chan, nothing is worth fighting with your mother over like this."

"Jessica!" Mrs. Marshall snapped, in a tone rather similar to the one that Kaoru would have used had any of their brood spoken to her that way. Kaoru would rapidly have followed that rebuke with a swat, too.

Jessica was on a rant now, however. In Japanese, but with a savage gesture with one hand at her mother, she continued, "Oh. Yes, it is. She'd have me treat you as if you are lower-class servants! I'll not give that sort of insult!"

"Jessica!" Mrs. Marshall repeated. Kenshin was honestly torn between siding with Jessica -- who was clearly on _his _side -- and with her mother. He would _never _have tolerated that kind of attitude from his children; he might have a reputation for being the 'nice' parent, but he had limits. On the other hand, he should probably be offended by her mother's attitude. On the third hand, his understanding of the situation -- and he cursed his lack of knowledge of the language -- was that Mrs. Marshall was concerned about how their presence would be perceived.

He was sympathetic to that. Kenshin didn't know a lot about upper class Brits but he knew appearances were very important to them.

"I would not be insulted," Kenshin said, trying to diffuse the situation. "Mou! This one is a humble man, Jessica. You know that."

"Pah!" She threw her hands in the air. "I won't have it. The issue is that my mother fears that people will _talk _because you're Japanese and I'm treating you as honored guests, or family. Kenshin-san -- Kaoru-chan -- you have never been anything but welcoming and open to me. You've treated me as one of the family and I am fully aware that Japan is just as bad about foreigners as British society is. If you can treat me as one of your family, I _will _do the same in return."

Chiyoko, meanwhile, was busily translating the discussion for Mrs. Marshall's benefit. Kenshin was glad for that; he didn't want the woman to think that they were talking about her secretly.

Mrs. Marshall said, "He doesn't mind, Jessica. Let it rest!"

"Absolutely not!" She rounded on her mother, turning away from Kenshin. "This is _my _house. Not yours. If you do not approve of me and those I consider dear friends and who will soon be family, _you _may leave."

Without skipping a beat, Chiyoko translated that into Japanese.

Kenshin shot her a look. She was rapidly going from 'competent' in English to 'completely fluent' -- though her eyes had a curiously unfocused look, perhaps because she was seeing someone else's memories.

Emily Marshall snorted. "You are a foolish child!"

"And this foolish child has turned a small fortune into a large fortune in less than a decade. I think I know a bit about what society will and will not accept! Anyone who has an issue with Kenji's family will _get over it_ when they remember just how much wealth I have!" She spun on her heels and stalked off.

"Guess we follow her," Kenji said, sounding embarrassed.

"Mrs. Marshall, if you'll excuse us," Chiyoko said, formally, "we should probably follow Jessica."

"Yes, go," Emily Marshall said, with a sigh. "I swear, that girl ..."

-----------------------

The following day, after they were given the rooms that Jessica had originally intended, Kenji nibbled at the pastry that had come with his lunch while studying the empty space in the attic room that would be his art studio. It was early morning, and grey light that made it feel earlier than the actual late morning hour flowed through dormer windows.

"Will it work?" Jessica said, a little eagerly, beside him.

He nodded. "It will be great for painting. Thank you, koishii."

He padded to the window in his stocking feet and looked out at a green countryside. It was a beautiful view, and oddly familiar. Though he had no firm memories, only impressions, of his childhood, it felt as if he'd stood in a window and looked at a view like this before, long ago.

Chiyoko was down below him, he could identify her short, sturdy frame at this distance. She was sitting on a fence feeding something to several horses in a pasture. Shinya leaned on the fence next to her, long hair rippling in a very slight breeze.

As he watched, Chiyoko said something that made Shinya laugh so hard that the horses spooked back from the fence. Warily, they returned to Chiyoko, seeking more treats.

"Looks like Chi-chan found your horses," Kenji said, with a smile.

"Good. I'll have Jack take her out for a hack later. Jack's my trainer." Jessica watched Chiyoko and Shinya -- they were both now petting the horses. With a little concern, she said, "Do you think we should really be leaving those two unchaperoned?"

Kenji snorted. "Shinya is _not _going to be a problem with Chiyoko."

"How can you be so sure? Shinya's seventeen, Kenji. He's the definition of hormones."

"Because I've known him all his life," Kenji said, quietly. "Chi-chan has absolutely nothing to worry about from him."

"I don't follow your meaning."

Kenji scratched the back of his head. "Just trust me on this one. I'm pretty sure I'm right, but I don't want to say anything specific because I could be wrong, too." He paused. "Anyway, Father would have his gonads if he tried anything with Chi-chan. And he knows it."

Jessica gave him a suspicious look, but didn't pursue the issue further. Instead, she changed the subject, stating, "My uncle sent a cable from Japan -- he's coming home. He'll be here this summer, as soon as his commission's up."

Kenji said, absently, "He and Chi-chan seem to get along well."

"Yeah, but I don't think your father likes him much. I'm not sure what happened there." Jessica frowned. "Uncle Marshall told me to tell Kenshin he was 'sorry' once for some unspecified offense. All Kenshin would say was that Marshall was very drunk."

Kenji shrugged, having no idea either. "Speaking of unpleasantness, may I ask if your mother still angry at you?"

Jessica barked a short, unamused laugh. "My mother hasn't been pleased with me since the day I was born, Kenji. Don't worry about it. I am eternally grateful that I was raised by my father and not her -- she could not stand to be in the same house with my father. Their marriage was arranged, and he was much older, and, by her opinion, a most improper and scandalous man."

"I surely see his influence in you," Kenji teased.

She grinned. "And you love me for it."

"Well, yes."

"Anyway, I was the only offspring of that marriage, for obvious reasons, and I'm honestly surprised that I even happened. Mother must have decided that she wanted to keep up appearances by getting pregnant, I don't know ... I often thought Father wished a boy but decided to make do with me as a substitute heir. When she died when I was fifteen, his company and his property were all left to me -- in a trust that was administered by a family friend until I turned twenty-one, though I ran the business from that day forward, with the friend's oversight. Father chose well, in advisors for me, and made sure he'd trained me well. He was almost eighty when he died, Kenji."

She sighed. He heard pain, there, and knew she would never have spoken of this if the subject had not come up because of the fight she'd had with her mother.

"Mother got nothing. The two truly despised each other. She was ... furious ... and tried to take it out on me and she didn't back down until I threw her out of the house she was staying in. She apologized and I've let her stay in one of the houses since with a staff, but we do _not _get along in person -- though we do correspond regularly. She's much nicer and more loving in letters than she is in person!"

"I'm sorry," Kenji said. "You never said anything of this."

Jessica shrugged, a short, sharp, aggressive gesture. Kenji thought perhaps she had not wanted to bring up old hurts. He wrapped his arms around her, tucking her head under his chin.

After a moment she said, "I'm so glad for your mother and father. Kaoru is like the mother I always wished I had. And Kenshin ... I'd hug him every time I saw him if I didn't think I'd embarrass him to death."

"Ah, if he died of embarrassment, he'd just come back to life," Kenji replied, deadpan.

She snickered into Kenji's chest. "Kenji, we need to set a date."

"A date?"

"For the wedding."

"Ah," he stroked her hair, silky strands flowing over his callused fingers. She snuggled into his arms, fitting so perfectly, so comfortably. "Can we elope?"

She slapped him in the chest. "Summer, I'm thinking. Maybe in three or four months. It'll give us time to prepare and the weather might be nice."

"Prepare?"

"I don't want a tremendously lavish affair, Kenji, but it will be a fairly big wedding. I have many business associates and friends who ought to attend, and there will be logistics involved." She made a face. "Don't worry, logistics is something I'm pretty good at. Though I might delegate the making of the guest list and the nitty-gritty details to my mother, believe it or not. Social occasions she's _good _at."

He nuzzled her hair. "Whatever you wish, Jessica."

She traced a finger down his powerful chest, feeling the muscles jump and twitch in response to her contact. "I know what I wish ..."

He laughed, a low rumble. "You've known what you wished for since the first day you met me, Jessica."

"Well, yes."

"Miss Marshall? Lord Kenji?" Bessie said, timidly, from the room's open door. "Pardon the interruption, but you have a caller."

"A caller?" Jessica prompted.

"It's Lord Byron Trevor." Bessie said. "He's waiting in the library."

"Your brother," Jessica prompted.

Kenji made a face.

"Actually, Byron's tolerable." Jessica said. "Viscount Trevor loathes him, and his brothers are not fond of him, but he's not a bad sort."

----------------

Lord Byron Trevor was seated in a chair in the library when they arrived. He didn't rise.

Unlike his brothers, he was not overweight. In fact, he was _under_weight -- a tall, skinny man with fingers that seemed too long for his hands and pale skin dotted with freckles. Thick glasses perched on a nose that had been broken more than once.

Familiar red hair curled around his ears. He was clean, which was immediately a point in his favor by Kenji's opinion. He'd made very few requests of Jessica, but he'd jokingly told her that his first use of her money as her husband would be to commission a proper Japanese style bath house ... to which she had replied she was already looking into it and it would be done _well _before the wedding.

Byron's blue eyes regarded Kenji thoughtfully for a moment before sayings, "Alastair, I presume?"

"Yes, please call me Kenji. Every time someone say Alastair, I wonder who is Alastair?" Kenji extended a hand for a western handshake.

Byron grasped it -- his hand was cool, dry, smooth. "I must say, you are not what I expected."

Jessica said, somewhat snidely, "What, not like your brothers?"

Byron snorted a laugh, to Kenji's surprise. "I feared there would be a third one of them, yes ..."

"Ani!" Yukio barreled into the room at that moment, before Kenji could react to Byron's words. He threw his arms around Kenji's legs, and announced loudly in Japanese, "Good morning!"

Kenji scooped him up. "Can you say that in English, Yuki-kun?"

"Good morning," Yukio said.

"Yukio, this is my brother, Byron. Say hello to Lord Byron."

Yukio eyed Byron suspiciously and said in Japanese, "He can't be your brother. You're _my _brother. He's not my brother too."

"Ah, but you can have more than one brother, brat, you know that. Say hello." Jessica prompted, ruffling Yukio's hair.

Suspiciously, Yukio studied Byron for a moment, then said, "Hello, Lord Byron -- Byron-san?"

The child had been confused about titles since he'd started learning English. Kenji ruffled his hair and explained in Japanese, "Just call him Lord Byron. Lord's even more polite than -san."

He set Yukio down -- Yukio promptly ran to a corner of the library where he'd already discovered a collection of picture books. Byron asked, "Whose child?"

"My father's," Kenji explained.

"Ah. The oriental man."

"Yukio's brother is mine as much as you are," Kenji said, quietly but very firmly.

That got a baffled look at from Byron. Jessica snorted and said, "Watch your word order, Kenji."

"Mou!" Kenji said, then to Byron, "I'm sorry. Words wrong order make meaning wrong and make stupid look Kenji. Let me again try ... Yukio is my brother ..." he glanced at Jessica, and got a nod of confirmation, "... as much as you are my brother. He is the brother of my heart."

To Jessica, with something approaching exasperation, he asked, "Was that _right_?"

"That was fine." She added to Byron, "I've been teaching Kenji English words since I met him, and seriously for the last several months when I thought he might come to England eventually -- he's doing well, I think."

Byron cleared his throat and smiled slightly. "I see."

"I am glad you came to meet me," Kenji said, glanced at Jessica, and then said, "Can we offer you anything? Tea?"

"Tea would be delightful. It's nippy out there." Byron smiled.

Jessica walked to the library door, summoned Bessie with a shout, and sent her off after tea and, "Some pastries, I'm not particular as to the kind, as long as they're fresh. Some biscuits. Some fruit. Go on."

The two brothers stared at each other for a moment before Kenji said awkwardly, "Afraid am did not make a best first meeting with William and George."

Byron grinned, suddenly, displaying a mouth full of white teeth that were reasonably intact except for one chipped front one. He brushed a stray red curl back from his eyes and said, "Those two! The Lord himself wouldn't make a good impression on them."

"The Lord ...?" Kenji wondered which lord.

"He means the Lord God," Jessica said, quietly, in Japanese. "The Christian God, Kenji. Be careful, here, what you say."

But Byron merely grinned suddenly. "I'm actually glad to meet you, too. One more person between me and the line of succession is a very good thing. And George _not _becoming Viscount Trevor someday is glorious indeed."

"I've no ... intention ... of stealing my brother's inheritance away," Kenji said, shaking his head firmly. "Jessica has enough for one humble husband."

"George is an ass," Byron said, bluntly, "I have nightmares about him inheriting. They are most unpleasant and I may chose to leave the country when he does. But -- you can judge his moral character for yourself eventually."

Kenji wasn't sure what to say to that, and wasn't entirely sure he understood Byron's words. Fortunately, Byron promptly changed the subject. "So, you were raised in Japan, were you?"

"Et-to ... yes."

"Interesting country. I have a lot of books on it. Will you tell me about it?" Byron said, eagerly, sounding younger than his years -- he was only two years younger than Kenji. "I want to go there, someday. The East fascinates me."

Kenji blinked, smiled, and said, "Japan is my home. I go back someday too. It is ... different ... Britain. Different to Britain?"

"Did you ever meet any samurai?" Byron practically bounced in his seat. "There's a samurai who sometimes comes to the manor on business for the Japanese minister. He's a splendid man."

Jessica snickered while Kenji was trying to figure out how to answer that. Jessica's snickers were worrying to Kenji; he suspected she knew something he didn't.

Kenji finally said, "The Meijii government ended ... samurai ... decades. Decades ago? Samurai are not ... official class ... anymore. But my adoptive father a very skilled samurai swordmaster. He fought during Meijii revolution. The very best. And the father of my mother, also a samurai. She ran a school of swordsmanship and trained me much growing up. I know many others, as well."

Byron's eyes lit up. "Could you show me?"

"Swordsmanship? I could teach you, yes ..."

"Not teach me. Show me. With this leg, I can't ever learn to fight. But I want to _see_." He grimaced. "George thinks he's good with a sword, but he's really not. Grandfather was good."

"Leg?" Kenji glanced down, noticing for the first time that George had a ... problem. There was a cane discreetly leaning against the arm of the chair. One of his legs appeared withered.

"Childhood paralysis. The doctors said I'd never walk. I proved them wrong." As if to make a point, he heaved himself to his feet, picked the cane up, and rested his left hand lightly on it.

"I'm sorry," Kenji said, at loss of what else to say. "I did not know."

His reaction was not what Kenji had expected. Byron snapped, "I don't need your pity, so don't give it. I'm no invalid! So -- would you be willing to give me a demonstration of swordsmanship? It is an amazing art."

"Et-to ... certainly, I could do that. If you don't mind, I'll change, and find someone to practice against."

-------------------

Shinya was a head shorter than Kenji, but twice as fast.

Kenji watched him warily, trying to predict his first move. He'd been sparring with Shinya in practice since he was not yet a teen and Shinya was only barely out of knappies -- and Shinya, in the last three or four years, had gotten good enough to honestly win about half their bouts. They could read each other with nearly psychic ease.

The boy stood barefoot on the grass, bokken held in both hands, brown eyes alert, wary. Sometime during the last ten minutes the tie holding his long black hair had come loose and his hair fell in a dark curtain across his back, rippling in the slight breeze. He was smiling.

Kenji stepped forward and fell into the easy rhythm of strike, block, strike, block, seeking an opening. Shinya, however, found the first mistake and slapped him on the thigh with the bokken.

Kenji then won by the simple expedient of fouling Shinya's bokken and knocking it out of his hand. It tumbled across the grass, fetching up against an ornate fountain.

"Bravo!" Byron cheered. "That was amazing!"

Kenji blushed in embarrassment. "Only practice."

Chiyoko, who was kneeling in the grass and mending a rip in one of Kaoru's gis with neat, efficient stitches, said, "Lord Byron, if you praise Kenji that much, he'll get a fat head."

"What is 'fat head'?" Shinya asked.

"Arrogant," Chiyoko provided the word in Japanese.

"Oh. Yes. Truth is!" Shinya agreed.

Kenji stuck his tongue out at both of them. "I'm not arrogant."

"That's because you have us and Jessica to keep you humble," Chiyoko said, serenely, as she held the mended gi up, inspecting her work.

Kenji picked the bokken up and regarded Byron thoughtfully. His brother had a withered leg, yes, but he was only using the cane for balance and he was surprisingly agile on steps and uneven ground. He'd kept up at a normal walking pace to the garden easily. And while walking outside from the library he'd casually mentioned that he'd ridden a horse over from Viscount Trevor's manor house.

Kenji tossed him the bokken. Reflexively, Byron put a hand up to catch it. Good reflexes, Kenji noted critically -- he'd reached for the hilt, accurately calculated the rate of spin, and snatched it out of the air without difficulty.

"Want a lesson?" Kenji asked.

"Surely, you jest!" Byron sounded outright offended.

Kenji shook his head, dismayed by his brother's reaction. "You interested in swords? -- You know it better if yourself do it."

"Have you missed the fact that I'm a cripple?" Byron snapped, bitterness and self-mockery rippling in his words.

Kenji stuck his own bokken out and gave Byron a hard thrust in the chest with it, shoving him backwards. Byron neatly caught himself with the cane and a swift movement with his crippled leg and then favored Kenji with an even greater glare.

"Ever be a master swordsmen? Never, not you ... but you move well enough to learn a lot." Kenji said, feeling he'd made his point. "No cripple, you. You can learn. If you want to. Teach you."

Byron hesitated.

Kenji started to thrust at him with wooden sword in his hand again. Byron batted it aside with the bokken that Kenji had tossed at him.

"Swords ... not about killing people. Not like we do. About ... Chi-chan, help me here," Kenji, frustrated by the language, appealed to her.

"Kamiya school is about discipline and fitness and personal mastery," Chiyoko said, promptly. "It's not about being the best, only about being _your _personal best. And it teaches them to defend others and stand up for those who are weaker and help those who need help. It's a school of swordsmanship that teaches peace."

She stood up, and said, "Lord Byron, how tall do you think I am?"

"Five feet?" He said, uncertainly.

"Four and a half. You're being nice." She walked over and held her hand out for Byron's bokken. Looking a bit confused, he handed it to her. "There's things I can't do with a sword because I'm short and just don't weigh enough. But I've mastered other techniques to compensate."

"_You _fight?" he said, incredulously.

"Kenji, want to spar against me?"

Kenji blinked at her. He had started her training, but Kenshin had taken over and she hadn't gone up against him since. In truth, he hadn't even _seen _her spar with Kenshin, as Kenshin was so dead-set on protecting the secrets of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu that he trained with her behind closed doors and without an audience. Kenshin doubtless wouldn't have minded if he'd asked to observe some of the training ... but he'd never summoned the nerve to ask.

He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to _know _that Chiyoko was being taught to be a killer by a man who did not believe in killing.

Still, he saw the point she was intending to make. He nodded once. "Come at me."

He didn't have a _chance_. Kenji barely managed to block the first blow, lost his grip on the bokken on the second, and ended up flat on his back in the grass when she planted a foot in the middle of his chest a heartbeat later. The tip of her bokken tapped his throat. He wasn't sure how she'd managed to land on her feet when he'd gone down, because he was reasonably sure she'd been nearly upside down when she'd kicked him. He'd have a bruise, later -- not uncommon for sparring matches, but Chiyoko's bare foot was an unexpected source for the mark!

"Show off!" he accused her, without sitting up. In truth, he was a bit stunned by the vast difference in their levels of abilities. And he needed to catch his breath.

Was this why Kenshin had never sparred with him, had never offered to teach him his school but rather insisted that he learn his mother's? And why Hiko had never tried to teach him Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu either? He knew in his heart that, even if he practiced twelve hours a day for the rest of his life he'd never reach Chiyoko's level of sheer skill or anything even close to it.

Byron was staring at Chiyoko, looking awestruck. So, Kenji noted, was Shinya. Shinya had a very peculiar expression on his face.

Kenji laced his fingers together behind his head on the grass, trying to look casual. "I think Chiyoko's saying is if a little girl size of a mouse can beat me when I weigh three times more than her .."

"... twice ...!" Chiyoko corrected.

"Okay, maybe it is only twice, you _have _eat lots of biscuits ..." He covered his disconcerted shock with near reflexive teasing.

"... Kenji!" She protested the teasing with a shriek.

"... if Chiyoko can beat me, a big man with a limp ought to be able to learn swordsmanship for fun. Which is what I'm offering teach you."

Byron was silent for a long, long moment. Then he held his hand out towards Chiyoko. "Offer accepted," he said, gravely.

She handed him the bokken.

Kenji rolled to his feet, and started showing his brother the most basic moves, modified for use by a man who could only hold a sword with one hand. This would be pure fun, he thought -- no, Lord Byron would never be a warrior. But watching him realize he could do more than he ever thought ... Kenji was looking forward to this with utter glee.


	45. Chapter 45

-1Author's Notes: Short chapter, but an important one.

Kirei Kiyara 'Oriental' is an odd word. It can be very offensive or not, depending on where (geographically) it's used and _how _it's used and who uses it. There's an Asian food market that I go to sometimes that proudly refers to itself as an 'oriental supermarket' but referring to someone who's Asian as an 'oriental' in this day and age may be perceived in the same light as the 'N' word would be, depending on who said it and where.

Re: Confusing linguistics ... hopefully I'm not confusing my readers. I've never tried writing a story with characters who are multilingual before!

-----------

Shinya laughed, easily, and chucked a pebble at Chiyoko's head. He was lounging on the bank of a creek, feet in the water, sunlight making golden highlights in his dark hair. "Chi-chan, I don't believe you!"

Chiyoko grinned, mischief sparkling in her eyes. "Oh, you should have seen him -- all amber-eyed and scary, coming after me. Then this guy steps out of a doorway and sees Kenshin and starts shouting he's a demon ..."

"I still don't believe you. Kenshin, clowning around like that?" Shinya said, dismissively. He wiggled his toes in the water then pulled one foot out and casually inspected the sole -- they'd been sitting by the water long enough that his toes were turning wrinkly and pale. After a moment of introspective study of his foot, he splashed his foot back into the water, startling little minnows, and then he changed the subject suddenly. "Chi-chan, yesterday, when you went after Kenji ... I didn't know you could fight like that."

Chiyoko shifted uncomfortably. "I just wanted to make a point to Lord Byron that just because you've got a weakness -- and mine is _definitely _my lack of height -- it doesn't mean you can't ..."

"Oh, I know why you did it," he said, dismissively. "I was just ... hell, not too long ago, you were this timid little girl who barely said two words and who shook when I swung a bokken at her. What _happened_?"

"You're not scared of me, are you?"

"No!" He scoffed, pulling both feet out of the water and sitting cross-legged on the mossy bank.

She gave him a very unconvinced look, just a silent frown in his direction.

"Okay, well, a little," he confessed.

"Well, don't be. Which do you prefer, this me or the scared me?"

He gave her a _look_, eyes narrowing and a frown touching his lips -- lips she'd like to kiss, but he hadn't made a move in her direction since that day when he'd been so desperately upset months ago in Tokyo. He'd been friendly, even affectionate, but not _physical _againSomething told her not to push it, though she wasn't sure what was holding _him _back. Well, other than the presence of a certain pair of redheads, one short and one tall, who tended to be assertively over-protective about her welfare._ That _might inhibit even the boldest of boys.

"I like this you," he said, finally, after a bit longer than she would have liked. "It's definitely an improvement."

She grinned anyway, pleased by his response. Then she remembered the inquiry from a minute ago, sobered, and said, "And to answer your question, Shinya, something in me changed when I killed that Immortal man. I can't ... I can't define it, exactly. I'm still me, but I'm _more_."

"Does it bother you?" He asked, gently. She remembered why she'd become so fond of this boy. He was different than the other males she knew -- Kenshin worried about her physical safety, Kenji teased and hassled her with strictly brotherly affection, but Shinya wanted to know what she _thought. _

She blew a sharp breath out, making her bangs bounce. For a moment, before answering, she caught one of the locks in her eyes with her fingers and pulled on it -- she needed to cut her hair, it was getting long enough to obscure her vision. She couldn't figure out how Kenshin could fight with his hair in his eyes all the time.

Eventually she said, "Yeah. It does bother me. Not so much because I changed, but because sometimes ... sometimes I think it'd be worth it to do it again, you know?"

"Kill someone?" he asked, shocked.

"For what I'd gain. Yeah. Oh, I wouldn't do it ... but that man, he needed to _die, _and I killed him and ... and it changed me. It made me better. Stronger, smarter, faster, wiser. I learned a new language. I see things differently now. I'm not the timid mouse I was before."

She grinned evilly. "I have memories in my head that I'm reasonably sure that girls my age aren't supposed to have. Particularly since the man I killed was a _man_."

Shinya clearly understood her meaning, because he blushed and looked away from her.

"Eh. They do explain a few things." She tugged at her bangs again before adding, "Then I think I'm a horrible person for thinking I might like to kill another bad guy for more power. And because I don't feel all that bad about the man I killed. He was a terrible person, and trust me, I know _exactly _how bad he was. And how much he enjoyed being evil. Ridding the world of evil like that ... and getting their knowledge and power in return as a reward ... it calls to me. If Kenshin knew how much it called to me, I think he'd stop training me."

Shinya had gone very still, listening to her.

She tucked her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs and said very softly, "If Kenshin ever kills another Immortal, these kind of feelings might destroy him. It could very well drive him mad. Or we could end up with a monster -- with someone who isn't Kenshin at all. Not the Kenshin we know."

He mirrored her pose, arms going around his own legs. Thoughtfully, he said, "If another Immortal killed you, or one of us, Kenshin might challenge him. That's the only way I can see him fighting to the death. Otherwise, he'd just walk away from a fight."

Chiyoko's closed her eyes. "I know. And knowing that is why I have to be better than anyone I might ever fight. I don't want Kenshin-papa killing anyone on my behalf."

She opened one eye. The sunlight still shone brightly on Shinya's hair, though the day felt darker and colder to her, all of a sudden. She asked, "Will you tell Kenshin about this?"

"No. No, I won't." He was a little slow in answering her, but his tone was believable.

"Good," she said, after a moment.

"We should head back to the house," he said, standing up and offering her his hand to rise. He pulled her easily to her feet. "It's getting close to dinner."

"I suppose you're right." She thought they had at least an hour before dinner, but she took his hint that he wanted to return anyway. "You're still scared of me, aren't you?"

"I ... a little. You're scary."

"I'm just me."

Candidly, he said, "That's not exactly reassuring, Chi-chan."

"At least you're honest," she sighed.

"That was _supposed _to be teasing."

She looked up at him. He grinned. She didn't think the grin was completely honest, but at least he was trying. She smiled back, a bit weakly. "And if I'd actually realized you were teasing, it would have been funny, Shinya. Sorry, I'm a bit slow today, I guess."

"It's okay. I forgive you."

"I'm so honored by your forgiveness."

He grinned broader.

She thought he was still faking the expression.


	46. Chapter 46

-1Author's Notes Trivia -- Alastair means 'Defender of Mankind' -- I thought that was an appropriate name for Kenji.

------------

"What's up ... with Kenshin?" Shinya asked, between sit-ups. Jessica's sprawling home had multiple parlors and sitting rooms and they'd taken over a large room on the second floor as a training room. Stripped of furniture, it was ample in size for practice on those days when the weather was inclement.

Kenji was seated cross-legged on the wooden floor, making a shinai from several lengths of bamboo. He hesitated before answering, "You noticed, too?"

"He's too quiet. He spent all day sitting in the garden yesterday, watching the damned grass grow."

"He has nothing to do here, the servants do it all. And I think he misses home," Kenshin said, quietly, "and he misses people."

"Sanosuke."

"And those still living. I think he sends a letter to somebody at least once a day."

Shinya finished his sit-ups and sat with one leg sprawled out in front of him, one leg folded up to his chest, and both hands propped behind him. He regarded Kenji for a long moment before saying, "Do you miss them?"

"Of course I do."

Shinya sighed. "I miss people, but I'm enjoying being here. Oh, I could do without the damned _weather, _but there's so much to learn ... English is hard, but I think I'll get it. Chi-chan has been helping."

"You've been spending a lot of time with Chiyoko," Kenji said, glancing up from his work. "She thinks a lot of you."

"She's fun. She talks to me about stuff. She's very intelligent."

Kenji gave Shinya a sharp look. "You know that my mother and father would approve if you wanted to marry her. So would your parents, I think. So would I, for that matter. And I daresay _Chi-chan _would like the idea."

Shinya closed his eyes, as panic rose in his chest -- he couldn't even explain it, but the thought of marrying her filled him with utter soul-deep dread. Fiercely, he told himself he wasn't scared of what she was. She was _Chiyoko_.

When he opened his eyes, Kenji was looking at him with narrowed blue eyes. "Don't break her heart, Shinya-kun. You've been raised better than that. Don't lead her on if you're not interested."

"I'm not leading her on," he said, weakly. "I really do like her. It's just ..." He couldn't explain what the _just _was, no more than he understood why the thought of a lifelong relationship with Chiyoko filled him with dread. He didn't want it. He didn't see it in his future. And the damndest part was that he did truly care for her, and he felt like he ought to be falling in love with her. On so many levels, they were so right for each other.

But he didn't think he loved her.

Oh, he enjoyed talking to her -- _being _with her. He could be with her for hours without ever being bored with the conversation. And he knew what she was already, and it didn't bother him ... much. Not enough to scare him off from a relationship with her.

And yet ... somehow, he _knew _that relationship would never happen. Even if his logic told him it should. They were very right for each other on so many levels. He didn't love her. He didn't think he _could_.

He sighed and said reluctantly, "I won't break her heart, Kenji. I promise."

"Good," Kenji said, shortly. Then he rose, "I wonder what's keeping Byron? He should be here by now."

"Want me to check the stable?"

At that moment, though, Byron pushed the door open. His hair was damp, and he had his glasses in his hand -- doubtless, the spectacles had fogged as soon as he'd walked into the warmer house from the damp, cold outside air.

"It's okay," Kenji said, grinning at his brother. Byron slid his glasses back on his nose -- Shinya was amused by the very marked resemblance between the two men when they both wore their spectacles. Putting his glassed back on freed Byron's hand, and Kenji promptly tossed the now-completed shinai to him. "Catch!"

He caught it without his usual grace -- he nearly dropped it. Shinya watched that fumbled move with concern. Maybe the man had simply not been paying attention, but he'd seemed stiff and sore. Back trouble, perhaps?

However, Byron didn't comment on any pain, so Shinya moved to the edge of the room and sat with his back to the wall, watching as the brothers quickly bowed to each other and then settled into a pattern of trading easy blows.

Byron wouldn't ever be a swordsman. Kenji wasn't training him with anything akin to true fighting in mind. But after a month of schooling three times a week with Kenji, Byron had so obviously gained confidence and courage -- and had started displaying a lively sense of humor that was kin to Kenji's own -- that Shinya could scarcely believe it.

Kenji refused to treat him as a cripple, something that Byron had commented on, with thanks, on numerous occasions.

_Whack. Whack. Whack. _Byron caught Kenji's pattern of blows with the shinai. Kenji pushed him a bit, getting into his space, and Byron easily stepped back, balancing with his cane and swinging that withered, twisted leg a second after the tip touched the ground. He was amazingly quick -- he'd had a paralytic fever as a toddler, he explained, and did not remember a time when he'd been any other way.

Unfortunately, in a real fight, Shinya figured, all you'd have to do to defeat him would be to knock his cane away then press an attack from the right -- it was his left leg that was paralyzed. He'd be on the ground in moments because he couldn't back up without the cane for balance. Not that Shinya would ever make such an observation to the young man. Byron's delight at learning some flavor of swordsmanship was very real; Shinya wouldn't dream to diminish that.

Kenji retreated, and Byron came after him with a swat that Kenji blocked easily and a playful laugh. "Got you on the retreat now, brother!"

Kenji swiped at his younger brother with the sword; Byron spun neatly away, cane clicking on the wooden floor.

Kenji body-checked him hard, in the back, chuckling. Usually, Byron was pretty stable on his feet and after an initial bit of shock at Kenji's easy willingness to wrestle with him, he seemed to appreciate a bit of horseplay as proof that his brother did not consider him an invalid -- but this time, he winced away and went down, hard, with a hiss of pain.

Kenji stopped instantly. Alarmed, he said, "Byron?"

"Sorry," Byron said, sounding breathless. "Damnit, that hurts."

"What? What hurts?"

Shinya straightened up, suddenly, as Byron pushed himself upright. There was a dark line of crimson blood seeping through Byron's white shirt. "He's injured, Kenji."

"What?"

"He's bleeding!" Shinya said, sharper.

"I'm fine!" Byron tried to wave them away and started to stand. "Really, I am!"

Kenji's hand rested on his shoulder, forcing him to remain sitting. "What happened?"

"It's nothing!" He insisted, sounding almost dismissive.

"You're bleeding."

"It just broke open. It'll quit in a bit. I probably shouldn't have done this, but damnit, I enjoy these bouts with you, Kenji," Byron sighed heavily.

"_What happened_!" Kenji's snapped.

"It's nothing!"

Kenji surveyed the line of blood -- and noted there were other spots appearing now. He snarled in a tone of voice that allowed for no argument, and which Shinya had rarely heard from him, "Take your shirt off."

"What? No!"

"_Do. It._" Kenji knelt beside him, setting his shinai down. Shinya remembered that Kenji's temper, while slow to boil, was somewhat legendary when it broke -- he'd been sent to live with Hiko for a few years for a _reason_ that largely had to do with damage to a few local bullies in Toyko. In a barely calmer tone of voice, Kenji growled, "You are bleeding and you will not tell me why. This concerns me quite a bit."

With angry, jerking motions Byron unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off. He tossed the shirt against the wall and presented his back to Kenji. "Happy?"

Kenji closed his eyes in disbelief at the mess of old and new injuries that were seared into Byron's back. Beside him, Shinya uttered an oath in Japanese. Kenji demanded, "Who did this to you?"

Byron shrugged angrily. He clearly resented Kenji's insistence on seeing the damage; Shinya thought that shrug had to have hurt, but by the damage to Byron's back, he also suspected Byron was very used to the pain. He'd been beaten -- recently -- with something like a switch or belt, but there were older scars ridged into his skin as well. Some were only half healed and some were red stripes of shiny new tissue and the newer scars lay over old white gnarled wounds that had badly healed a long time ago. It looked like years -- perhaps decades -- of damage.

"_Who_?" Kenji repeated, aghast.

"Basil. Our cousin." Byron shuddered. "He's back."

"_Why_?" Shinya demanded, a heartbeat before Kenji snarled the same word in Japanese, apparently having forgotten his English in dismay.

Byron shrugged again. The motion made a rivulet of blood run down his back. "He said I was looking at a stable boy. I _wasn't_."

"I ... huh?" Kenji squeezed Byron's shoulder gently, apparently realizing he was being a bit aggressive in his approach. "Shinya, stay with him. I'm going to go get a basin and some rags. Some of those cuts are infected and have been for a long time."

Kenji rose in one swift move and stomped out of the room. He yanked the door shut angrily after him, causing it to go _bang _loudly.

"I'm sorry," Byron said, tucking his good knee to his chest. "I didn't mean to cause trouble."

"Oh," Shinya said, a bit baffled why anyone would _apologize _for needing care after being beaten, "Don't sorry. Basil will sorry when Kenji gets him."

"No!" Byron said, sounding appalled. "I have to live with the man!"

"Anyone beat me like you? I leave." Shinya shook his head in disbelief.

"Where would I go?" Byron said, bitterly.

Shinya wanted to ask a _lot _of questions, but he found himself stymied by the language barrier. He'd known Byron for a month, had come to like him -- the tall red-haired man seemed younger than his years, but had a remarkably engaging charisma that made Shinya want to know him much better. And to find out someone had been beating him for what looked like _years_ ... Shinya was _pissed_. He was going to _kill _someone. Eventually. At the moment, he figured throwing a fit to match Kenji's was going to alarm Byron even more and he didn't want that at all.

He couldn't imagine this man _doing _anything to deserve such a beating. That was assuming _anyone _deserved to be beaten on a regular basis, which Shinya had trouble finding justification for. And he was twenty-three years old; why hadn't he just up and _left _the abuse? Shinya figured he would have walked out years ago.

Actually, he would have beaten the shit out of anyone who tried to whip him like that. _Then _he would have walked out. He would have lived in an alley or under a bridge before putting up with that sort of abuse.

Byron said quietly, "You must think me a complete ... sissy, not to defend myself against this. Basil's bigger than me, and meaner than me, and he has two good legs. It goes badly for me if I try to defend myself. Always has. It's easier just to ... take it."

"Bad that he hits you." Shinya reached a hand out, intending to rub Byron's shoulder sympathetically. "_Bad_."

Byron flinched away. He muttered, "Don't touch me."

"Gomen ... sorry." Shinya waved his hands helplessly in the air.

"I can't leave," Byron said, miserably. "Grandfather won't ever give me more than a few pounds here and there for necessities. What would I do for a living? Who would hire a damned invalid?"

Shinya had learned that word _from _Byron. He snorted in disgust. "You're _not _invalid."

"You two! You treat me like a whole man. Most people think I should be locked up and hidden away like I've committed a crime. I _hate _people." There was real anger in his voice. "Basil says I'm a waste. That grandfather shouldn't spend what little funds he does on me. That I shouldn't even have the right to exist."

Kenji returned in record time, carrying a basin of water, several handfuls of rags, a pot of ointment that Shinya recognized as coming from Japan, and an old sheet. He was also calmer. Quietly, he asked, "How long as Basil been hitting you?"

Silence, from Byron. Finally, he said, "You're the lucky one. Such good fortune you had, to be raised by parents who loved you."

"Yes." Kenji agreed, "I was very lucky. I wish I'd known this sooner. This ... wrong. I will _stop _it."

"Don't! I have to live with him. You can't pick a fight with Basil. I have to go home to him! He's going to be angry enough ..."

Kenji knelt behind Byron and said quietly, "You're not going home. You're staying here tonight."

"... then it'll be worse when I go home later!"

Kenji dabbed at the blood-crusted wounds, gently washing away oozing gore and a bit of pus. "You do not need go back. Why not George and William stop this? And Grandfather?"

"They _hate _me." This was said with a bit of a sniffle. "I'm sorry, Kenji, I should have sent word that I was sick and not come until I was healed. But I like you guys. I wanted to see you two again, and Chi-chan, maybe, and Miss Marshall, and Shinta and Mrs. Kamiya and ... I like all of you." He paused, then said, "I _hate ...sss! _people." He winced as Kenji worked on his back.

"I'm so sorry," Kenji murmured.

"I wish I'd grown up with you and not William and George," Byron glanced over his shoulder at Kenji, who was now picking bits of lint out of a fresh cut. "I wish Mother and Father had taken me with them too, so I would have lived with you."

"What he hit you with?" Kenji asked.

Shinya thought, _I wish you'd grown up with Kenji too._

And then he was startled by the depth of emotion in that thought. Because it was all mixed up in a _desire to know this man_, and a ferocious need to _protect_, and a good bit of confusion that was even more confusing because he didn't know _why _Byron was affecting him so strongly. He'd seen injustice before, even injustice delivered to friends and family.

What had happened -- and was happening -- to Byron made him want to kill someone. Murder wasn't out of the question. And he had been raised to believe in peace!

Byron answered Kenji's question, "A fencing foil. Sometimes he uses a fireplace poker or a dressage whip. Depends on how angry he is. The fireplace poker is the worst." Byron started shivering as Kenji worked. "Cold in here."

"Shinya, would you cut that sheet into strips?" In Japanese, Kenji added, "Some of these wounds are very infected. It's an old, chronic infection and the recent beating has made it flare up. We'll want to keep him here until it's all had a chance to heal."

Shinya nodded. "I'll sit on him, for you, if I have to."

-------------------

"Father," Kenji said, approaching Kenshin in the library a few hours later, after leaving Shinya with Byron. "I need to talk to you."

Kenshin looked up from a letter he was writing. His violet eyes looked tired; Kenji wished he wasn't bringing trouble to his father. "Aa?"

"My ... younger brother. Byron. He came today, to spar with Shinya and I."

"That's a good thing you do for the boy, it is," Kenshin said, smiling. "It's obvious he's eager for approval, that it is."

"Mmm. Someone named _Basil _-- he said a cousin of ours -- has been beating him. Badly. For years." Kenji gritted his teeth until it hurt.

"This does not surprise me," Kenshin washed his brush off in the little cup of water by his hand and calmly set it down on a bit of blotter paper to dry.

"You should _see _his back," Kenji said, fists balling. "It's a horrible mess. Someone should have done something a long time ago about this. He's been beaten so badly that he's sick with a fever. I've asked Shinya to stay with him, and he'll stay here tonight -- but I want to go speak to this Basil. Tonight. This stops _now_."

"Your two other brothers have also been abused, and badly, that they have." Kenshin steepled his fingers together. "The elder has become mean and aggressive because of it, but I do believe he is protecting the youngest, William. William looks to George for defense, and George fights the world for them both. Does Byron also look to George for defense?"

"He says he _hates _his brothers," Kenji shook his head. "And nobody's defending him."

"I've watched you in the garden, sparring with him. There is no cruelty in that man's soul. This can be told simply by the way he responds to your praise, and gives thanks and gratitude so quickly in turn despite the abuses heaped upon him. He is much like you, Kenji, that he is." Kenshin's eyes ... changed ... just for a moment. The violet lightened a bit. "I am glad we raised you, Kenji, and not your birth family."

"Trust me, so am I!" He smiled, then sobered. "But ... now that I know about my little brother ... I have to do something for Byron."

Kenshin raised an eyebrow. "For Byron alone? So do you believe that your other siblings are beyond all hope and all redemption? You give up on them so easily?"

Kenji blew a sharp breath out. Trust his father to show him a new aspect to a situation that he would never have considered, otherwise. That ability to see the big picture _was _why he was here. "You're right, Father. If George is defending William, it must mean there is something that they have learned to defend themselves _against_. They need my help too ... perhaps it is Basil or perhaps others, I don't know. I need to try to get Byron to tell me more. They're my little brothers, father. I cannot walk away now that I know that they likely _need _me."

"They're also grown men. They bear some responsibility for their own fates, now," Kenshin leaned back in his chair, cupped a hand behind his head, and regarded Kenji thoughtfully. "Are you thinking of trying to be recognized as Viscount Trevor's heir?"

"I don't know. Do you think I should?" Kenji said, miserably.

"It may give you power and influence within the family. I do not think it will bring you any happiness." Kenshin frowned, apparently not having an easy answer. "I can only tell you to be _careful, _and to remain true to yourself. And to not act rashly."

"Aa."

Kenshin hesitated for a long moment, then added, "Most likely, George defends William while Byron is the easy target for this Basil's malice. That is my guess. I may, of course, be wrong. And there are never simple answers in a situation such as this, that there are not."

----------------


	47. Chapter 47

Author's notes I hate doing this because it's a bit spoilerish, but I've been reminded that I need to put a yaoi warning on this story.

Consider yourself officially warned that there will be some nonexplicit m/m scenes ahead. This is NOT, repeat NOT, a lemon.

I do NOT do explicit scenes in fanfic posted in open (unprotected) archives, and nothing in this story is about gratuitous sex anyway. The m/m bits upcoming in this story (a few chapters down the road) have a point and a plot reason for being there.

(And yes, ALL this has a point and most of the various threads are going to tie together.)

----------------

Byron woke early the next morning to bright light that didn't belong to his north-facing bedroom. He opened his eyes, was confused for a moment, and then realized that he was in a bed in the Marshall manor. Dawn light streamed through east windows.

There was movement, in the room.

He lifted his head, jerking fully awake in alarm. The servants mostly left him at alone at home; he never woke to anyone in his room unless it was trouble.

It was the young man, Shinya. Byron blinked in surprise - Shinya had a basin of water, bandages and rags, and breakfast, balanced on two trays. Shinya said, "Good, you're awake."

"Barely," Byron growled, then realized he sounded far grumpier than he actually felt. Shinya was disturbingly alert for an hour that was before noon.

But to his relief this tone of voice only earned him a grin from Shinya, who was apparently not disturbed by snarling Englishmen. Well, that didn't surprise Byron, given the way that the whole lot of them -- Shinya, Kenji, and their friends -- related to each other. They spent as much time insulting each other as they did making polite talk. Chiyoko and Kenji could spend _hours _trading insults.

Byron had previously guessed him to be about eighteen -- and with that gorgeous, perfect fall of ebony hair to his waist, a pair of knife-sharp cheekbones, and deep brown eyes, the guy was rather exotically attractive. Not that Byron would ever _admit _that. In fact, Shinya made him a bit nervous for fear he'd do something stupid, like stare a bit long.

"Where's Kenji?" Byron asked, sitting up.

"He'll be here later. The storm yesterday made a huge mud ... mud lake? -- and Mrs. Marshall's carriage is stuck on the road with something broken... He asked me to take care of your back, and he says sorry and says they'll be up after they fix the carriage. She apparently is wanting on going to church."

Shinya set the tray of breakfast down on the bed, then the basin of water and bandages on the table beside the bed. "Please, take your shirt off and turn around."

Reluctantly, Byron did so. His borrowed nightshirt was stuck to his back; the bandages, beneath it, were crusted with oozing fluids from the wounds. Shinya hissed in sympathy, then started soaking them off with water-soaked rags.

The water was warm, and Shinya's hands were gentle. "Relax," Shinya said, "I've done this sort of thing before."

"What, coddle cripples?"

Shinya swatted him in the back of the head. The blow was fast, not so hard it hurt, and utterly unexpected -- it was a _teasing _slap, the sort delivered between friends. It was the first time in his life that being smacked had ever left Byron with a happy feeling inside, and that, he decided, was rather an unusual experience. Before he could react, however, Shinya said, "Don't call yourself cripple. And I meant, treat injuries. A family friend, a doctor. All of us help her, sometimes. She run a clinic."

"Shinya," Byron said, after a moment, "Thank you."

"Mmm. It is nothing."

Byron closed his eyes. "Your kindness ... it matters. There's things about me that you don't know ... you might not be so kind if you knew them."

"We've all got our secrets," Shinya said, after a moment's long pause. "You'd be surprised."

At that moment, Yukio ran into the room through the door, which Shinya had left open a crack. The boy launched himself onto the bed, landing on his knees next to Byron's breakfast. "Hi L'Byron!" Yukio, said, breathlessly, "There's kittens in the stable!"

"Kittens?" Byron said, with interest. "What color are they?"

"There's 'n orange one, 'n a black and white one, and a calico!" Yukio said. "Wanna come see?"

"Maybe tomorrow, Yuki-kun," Shinya reached out and ruffled the boy's head. "I think Lord Byron needs to stay in bed today."

"Awww ..." Yukio protested.

"Maybe you could bring the kittens up?" Byron said, in a tone of voice not very much different from that of a small boy. "I _love _kittens."

Shinya burst out laughing. "That, I might do. You keep Yukio good for a few minutes -- and I warn you, that's not easy -- and I'll go get the kittens."

-----------------

"Aaugh!" Kenji protested, as Kenshin sloshed a bucket of very cold well water at him. Thick black mud flowed off his bare chest and puddled in the kitchen garden. The water was icy; he stood, drenched and shivering, as Kenshin pumped another bucket's worth and then sluiced his other side.

"Your turn," Kenji said, with glee, after the fourth bucket reduced him from a walking mud-man to merely 'grimy'. The servants had been shocked when he'd willingly waded in to help shift the carriage, but he was one of the biggest men at the manor, and definitely one of the most fit. His muscle had been needed to help fix the axle that had broken on the sloppy, rutted road.

He pumped a bucket of water for Kenshin and then dumped it over his father's head. "Oro!" Kenshin protested, "That's cold, it is!"

"I _miss _the bath house!" Kenji started pumping again as Kenshin raked his fingers through his mud-soiled red hair. _Kenshin _was muddy because Kenshin had helped hold the horses while they fixed the carriage; one of the horses had knocked him down. "I'd give anything for a proper bath."

"Are you going to go over to Trevor's this morning?" Kenshin asked, as he knelt with his head under the pump. Kenji racked the handle up and down; Kenshin furiously worked dirt and slime and worse out of his red hair.

He waited until Kenshin came up for air before answering, "After lunch ... ah, no, there's Trevor's carriage now. Looks like I won't have to go to him." The carriage had rolled past on the drive, the top of it visible over the garden wall.

Kenji pumped a bucket of cold water, used it to rinse the worst of the filth from his shirt, then yanked the damp cloth over his head. Then, resolutely ignoring the goosebumps on his arms, he headed off to meet whichever Trevor had come calling.

A thin man stepped out of the carriage. Narrow features, squinty eyes, nose broken multiple times, limp blond hair -- not a positive impression, Kenji thought. Of course, he wasn't in a mood to be positively impressed by any of the Trevors at the moment. In fact, he was positively unimpressed.

"Boy," the man said, "Get Jessica Marshall for me."

"Jessica's at church with her mother," Kenji said, carefully pronouncing the words. It was Sunday, which meant that Mrs. Marshall would be at church services for most of the morning -- and she expected Jessica to attend with her. She had also expected Kenji to attend in the beginning, but after several embarrassing faux pas caused by his difficulty with the language and complete lack of knowledge of Christianity, she'd quit demanding that he go. She also made snide remarks about _heathens _and _barbarians _within his earshot on a regular basis, which he found only amusing.

She hadn't even _tried _to make the rest of the family attend, muttering something about 'lightning striking if those heathens stepped inside the church' ... that comment possibly having something to do with a Shinto shrine that Kaoru had set up in her room. Not that Kaoru -- or the rest of the family -- was particularly religious, but it just didn't feel _right _not to have one somewhere in the house.

"_Miss Marshall," _the man snapped, apparently correcting Kenji's use of Jessica's first name. "Very well. Is Alastair Trevor here?"

Kenji scratched his jaw, found a bit of drying mud that the water had missed, and deliberately took a minute to flake it off. If he was going to look like a barbarian, he figured, he might as well act like one, too. In his thickest accent, he said, "That me."

The man's eyes narrowed. "_You're _my fucking cousin?"

Kenji raised both eyebrows. Apparently, his cousin's first impression of him wasn't much better than Kenji's impression of the cousin. "You're Lord Basil Russell?"

"Yes." A pause. "That's _Sir _Basil Russel."

"Sir. My apologies. And yes, we're cousins," he said, then straightened up suddenly, squaring his shoulders, lifting his chin, narrowing his eyes. He knew he'd gone from _peasant _to _lord _in one breath, in body language. Basil stepped back, eyes suddenly narrowing.

"You _do _look like the other Marshall brothers," Basil said, frowning. "I hope you've more class than that lot. Viscount Trevor thinks highly of you."

"Hnn. You're Viscount Trevor's grandson also?" Kenji said, very neutrally.

Basil snorted. "No. I'm your mother's brother's son."

"I know very little about the family," Kenji confessed. "Grandfather Trevor has come a few times, but he talks about business. He would like to expand his trade in Japan ... and, of course, I am fluent in Japanese. Unfortunately, I am not fluent in _business_ and I cannot help him as much as he would like. Byron has told me some, including the fact that by rights you should be calling me _Baron _Alastair Trevor, but it is a mystery to me why he has not mentioned _you_."

Basil barked a surprised laugh. "So he has been coming here?"

"He's welcome here." Kenji said, very firmly. He was also aware that Kenshin had quietly come up behind him. Kenshin had taken long enough to arrive that Kenji thought he'd gone inside to retrieve his sword. A quickly glance over his shoulder told him that Kenshin was wearing his sakabatou openly at his hip.

Basil also glanced at Kenshin and then did a double take at the sword. But he simply said, "You need to know what you're inviting into your home, Lord Trevor."

Kenji didn't miss the fact that Basil had not acknowledged his unsubtle reminder that tradition would dictate that Viscount Trevor's heir use his secondary title of Baron. He took that to mean that Basil wasn't going to acknowledge he was by law his grandfather's heir. That, at least, was useful information.

"Ahh? And what are we inviting in, Sir Russell?" Kenji said, through gritted teeth.

"No! Don't tell him!" At that moment, Byron launched himself out the manor's front door, stumbling in a near run towards them. He had his trousers yanked on over the nightshirt that Kenji had loaned him, and his cane clattered on the cobblestones of the drive with furious speed. "No! Basil, no! Please, I'll go home, I'll never come here again ..."

"Shut up," Basil said, savagely, to the young man.

Shinya appeared a second later, also running. "Sorry, Kenji!" He shouted, as he ran up. "There was this thing with kittens, I left him alone to go get them, and I guess he saw this out the window ..."

"Basil, no, please!" Byron pleaded.

"They _need to know_," Basil said, savagely. "Everyone needs to know about the crimes against morality that you've committed, Byron. If you don't want me to tell people, you should mind. But if you can't mind, I have to warn them."

"No!" Byron said, then slipped and fell to the ground, landing hard on his hip on the stone driveway. Kenji spared him a glance -- Shinya quickly knelt beside him, obscuring Kenji's view of Byron's expression.

"No!" Byron said, pushing Shinya away from him. The young man sounded perilously near tears. Shinya, startled, landed on his rump on the cobbles and sat staring at Byron in shock. "No!"

"What crimes do you believe this man has committed?" Kenshin's words were surprisingly clear. It had been a few weeks since Kenji had heard him speak English. "Byron has done nothing wrong here."

"I'll tell them!" Byron said, suddenly, "I'll tell them! I _hate _you, Basil! I bloody hate you!"

Kenshin's voice held command in it when he said, "Tell us, then."

"I ... when I was fifteen, there was another boy. We ... we violated each other." Byron said in a very small voice. He sobbed, suddenly, burying his face in his hands. "We violated each other!"

"Violated ...?" Kenji blinked. Glanced at his father. Kenshin looked about as confused as Kenji felt.

"They were fucking like billy goats," Basil said, lips curling up in absolute distaste. By his tone of voice, they might have been having sex with dead animals rather than with each other. "The boy is incorrigible. It is a crime against nature, and I have _not _been able to cure him of it. Since their father died, I've raised all three boys. None of them have turned out for crap, but _this _one -- Byron is a twisted little boy. He's _foul_. I caught him just two days ago, watching a little stable boy."

"I _wasn't_!" Byron wailed.

"You stared at him for over five minutes!"

Byron said nothing for a long moment. His tears seemed like those of a man years younger -- a boy, hopeless and broken. Then through tears he stammered, "I was just ... I was just watching him groom my horse ... he was having fun! He's just a little boy, why would _anyone _find a little boy like that ... you disgust me more than _I _disgust me, Basil! That you would even think that I would look at a little boy in that way!"

Basil took a step towards Byron, with violence clearly on his mind.

Byron seemed to ... shrink. He cringed, flinging a hand up, ducking his head. "Sorry!" He wailed.

But suddenly, Kenshin was there, before anyone else had a chance to react. He said not a word, but his hand was on the hilt of his sakabato and his eyes glittered gold from beneath his bangs. Kenji, also coming to Byron's defense, pulled up short at that uncanny sight.

He'd heard others speak of the _Battousai _in awe but he'd never seen his father regard anyone with that sort of a look of pure cold _threat _before. It was ... unexpected.

Sir Basil took a step back, then two. Kenshin just continued to glare.

"_That _is why you beat him so savagely?" Kenji said, in awful, baffled horror. Shinya finally moved, making a small, strangled noise and hurrying behind Kenshin to kneel again beside Byron, who was now sobbing helplessly -- broken sounds.

Only the certain knowledge that he couldn't help his brother if he was swinging from a gallows kept Kenji from killing Basil then and there.

He wondered what it would take to reduce a grown man to such noises -- what sort of abuse had Byron suffered over his life? This exchange this morning was certainly only the tip of the iceberg.

He was _furious_.

Angrily, and perhaps oblivious to just how close Kenji was to snapping, Basil snarled, "He needs to learn to control his base impulses. I will do whatever it takes ...!"

"You will leave," Kenshin said, in a tone of utter threat.

"I'm seriously contemplating murder," Kenji said, "for the very first time in my life."

"I can think of a few things worse than death," Shinya added. He appeared to be trying to get Byron to stand, but Byron was now rocking back and forth and shrugging off Shinya's attempts to touch him.

Basil looked from Shinya, to Kenji, to Kenshin. His gaze _stayed _on Kenshin for a long moment. The Battousai's amber eyes stared back, hard and cold and glittering from beneath a fall of crimson hair. Kenshin had removed the tie holding his hair back when he'd rinsed it out earlier; a slow breeze made the damp strands of his loose hair sway. It was the _only _movement from him.

Basil blinked first. As staredowns went, wasn't even really a contest between him and Kenshin. He turned, suddenly, and said angrily as he climbed back into his carriage, "You are all fools. And I should have put that perverted freak down like a sick dog years ago."

The carriage clattered away moments later.

Kenshin blinked. The amber faded from his eyes. Abruptly, he whipped around on Byron, who stared up at him in fear and awe. "I have just _one _question."

"Yes sir?" Byron blinked.

"Did you force the other boy?" Kenji had never heard _quite _that tone out of his father before. There was fierce tension there. Kenshin's tone of voice demanded an answer and threatened retribution for a lie.

"No!" Byron denied. "No, no, we ..." he closed his eyes, and said as if he was imparting some awful truth, "I loved him like a woman."

Kenshin blinked again. With savage disgust he snarled something under his breath that Kenji didn't quite catch, though he heard the words _kamisama _and _Victorians! _and _idiots! _and _sex! _Shinya, who was a bit closer, apparently heard the whole thing -- and he looked thoroughly impressed. It wasn't often that you saw Kenshin lose his temper. However, he also appeared to be frightening Byron, who was shrinking away.

Kenshin, realizing this cut his temper off short and said,, "Your cousin is a complete and utter fool."

_That _was delivered in English. Kenji blinked a bit again, and wondered where Kenshin had been practicing the language. With Chiyoko, maybe?

"I'm sorry," Byron said. "I .. I wish you hadn't threatened him. It'll be worse for me when I go home, now. He's going to be absolutely furious."

Kenshin squatted down next to him, resting easily on the balls of his feet. Very calmly, in a tone one might almost use on a frightened animal, he said, "We're not going to make you leave, Byron. You can stay, that you can."

"But ..." Byron blinked at Kenshin. "Who _are _you?"

Kenshin smiled encouragingly. The amber in his eyes, and the frightening coldness of his expression, were totally gone, replaced by gentle kindness. "Just a man, that I am. Byron, I know you'll find it hard to trust us, but we do not hate you, and you are welcome here, and you are safe with us."

Byron wrapped his arms around his good leg. Tears were still rolling down his face. "He's treated me like that my _whole life_."

"Gods, Byr-kun," Kenji crouched beside Kenshin, "If I'd known this was going on, I swear I'd have come here a long time ago. I'm so sorry."

Kenshin said, in the same quiet tone, "Do you think you can stand up now? I think we should move inside."

"Y-yeah. Hand me my cane."

Byron hitched himself to his feet and stood, tall, thin and gangly, staring at them. His eyes were huge in his face. Softly, he said, "You're not ... not disgusted by me?"

Kenji said roughly, "Nah. Though you can stop blubbering; it's embarrassing."

Byron hiccupped, made an obvious effort and ending the tears, and failed. "S-sorry. I can't ... when I get upset ... this happens ... fuck it. I'm sorry ..."

"It's okay," Shinya said, resting a hand on his arm and looking up at him. "If somebody -- did that to me -- I think I'd cry too."

"Ah, you cry over less than that," Kenji said, relieved to suddenly be on familiar ground. Teasing Shinya, that he could do. "Remember the time you accidentally squished that butterfly?"

"I was _five_!" Shinya protested.

"You bawled for two days!"

"Kenji!"

Kenji snickered at Shinya's indignant look. Byron chuckled shyly through his tears as well, though it was obvious by his expression that he wasn't entirely sure what he was laughing at.

Shinya clapped Byron on the arm. "C'mon, Lord Byron. I think Kenji and Shinta need baths and dry clothes and you should really be in bed."

-----------------

Kaoru pursed her lips, after Kenshin had finished relating the morning's events to her a few hours later. She was a bit annoyed at having missed the excitement of Basil's arrival earlier; she'd taken some of the kids for a walk in the countryside and everything had happened while she was gone.

"Why would he be so cruel to his own cousin?" Kaoru said, shuddering. "I thought the Byron was a bit on the neurotic side, but I never even imagined ..."

Kenshin sat on the bed, crosslegged beside Kaoru, peeling an apple with a small paring knife. "Basil's level of anger usually has a root in terrible mistreatment. I fear very much that something awful happened to Basil himself in the past. Byron is perhaps only the latest unfortunate soul in a chain of many victims behind him."

"Which doesn't excuse this Basil's behavior."

"No. It doesn't. He's at least thirty years old. More than old enough to be fully responsible for his own actions. They _all _are, all three brothers and the cousin." Kenshin sectioned the apple into eighths with the knife and then handed all but one piece to Kaoru. He ate his piece of apple before adding, "Byron has been _horribly _scarred, Kaoru. It will take him a long time to heal, that it will. I am very worried about him."

"The boys seem to have taken a liking to him," Kaoru said, frowning. "So have I. We'll all stand behind him."

"Aa. In truth, I like him too. Byron has been treated very badly, and he has _not _become another Basil or another George. He could easily have ended up like Soujiro, or even Shishio -- dark and twisted. Instead ... he broke. Instead of fighting back, he cries like a small child. He does not fight to any great degree. But in breaking, rather than allowing darkness into his soul, perhaps that indicates a different sort of strength of character. Sometimes, giving up is harder than getting angry."

Kenshin grew very still, for a moment, before saying softly, "In him, I see Kenji. They are much alike, those two. Neither has any anger or evil in their souls, both have a certain innocence in their hearts that they shall not lose until the day they die."

"Except Byron likes men," Kaoru pointed out, with a snicker. There'd never been any question about which sex _Kenji_ had preferred, and from a very young age. _Pretty girls_ had been enough to get Kenji's attention for as long as Kaoru could remember. In fact, she was pretty sure that his first crush had been on Ayame, much to the then-teenage girl's disgust and everyone else's amusement given that Kenji had been only seven or eight at the time.

"Hnnh. Who you're inclined to fall in love with doesn't make as big of a difference to a person's character as you'd think." He answered her seriously, even though she'd been joking.

Kaoru sobered. "I'm proud of Kenji and Shinya both. They're handling this very well."

"Aa. So am I." Kenshin nodded. "Shinya's really grown up in the last few months. Yahiko was right in that his son needed to get out and see the world."

------------------

A few brief author's notes at the end here -- didn't want to put them at the beginning because of spoilerish type concerns.

I was worried that parts of this chapter might be a bit over the top. Then I remembered a friend of mine who has some utterly horrific tales to tell including being abandoned in her teen years (before she was eighteen) by her parents and ending up on the streets of San Francisco after some very horrific and sustained emotional abuse by both her parents and her church clergy ... That's in the modern day -- she's in her 20's, now. Her parents still do not speak of her or even acknowledge she exists. So. This story's on the extreme end of the sort of abuse that happens, but it DOES happen, even now.

And around the turn of the last century, things would have been much, much worse.


	48. Chapter 48

Author's Notes I now have a fanfiction blog at ljmouse dot livejournal dot com. Note the "j" in ljmouse. I will be using this blog for musings and comments on works in progress for outtakes that don't make the main story, for comments and reviews of other people's stories, and for posting rough drafts of work in progress.

I've already posted some thoughts on Byron and Shinya and a rough draft of chapter 49. :-)

Ya'll are all invited on over.

Oh, and this chapter's a bit slow. I know. Sorry. Next chapter has a bit more action in it, plus the addition of one canon and much loved Highlander character, a certain very spiritual man who ought to get along with Kenshin just splendidly. (Said meeting has been planned all along; Kenshin said he knew him in _Walk Not Alone _and that wasn't a throw-away line.)

-----------------------

Shinya sat crosslegged on the grass, running a whetstone down the sharp side of his father's sakabatou. He made a point of caring for the thing with devotion -- it was really the only thing he had that was his _father's. _He didn't know how long it would be before he saw his mother and father and younger siblings again. Years, maybe. n

He couldn't bring himself to think of it as _his _sakabatou. It was his father's -- Yahiko had carried the sakabatou for as long as Shinya could remember, with special permission to wear it in public. He'd practiced with it almost daily. And when he wasn't wearing it, he kept it in a rack in a prominent place in the house.

He'd used the sword to fight with, occasionally -- Shinya knew his father's work was dangerous, and sometimes he ended up fighting.

Shinya wiped a cloth down the long blade, oiling the metal lightly.

He didn't want to ever do battle with the sword himself. When he had been younger, of course, he'd dreamed of going up against terrible bad men with a sword -- against criminals and monsters and enemies of all sorts. That had been -- well, it hadn't actually been so long ago. In fact, Shinya would have been embarrassed to admit _how _recently he'd daydreamed about fighting battles.

He sheathed the sword.

Four months ago, Yahiko had given him the sword. And when his fingers had closed on the heavy hilt and he'd realized it was his _forever_, he'd found that he never wanted to wield it in anger.

Oh, he _could_. The Kamiya school mostly used shinai and bokken, but advanced students learned to fight with an iaito -- a dull practice sword. He was confident that if he ever had to fight in a real fight, he _could_. But he dreaded the anger, and the rage, and the hatred that would come with the battle. And he feared he would hurt someone ... the sakabatou was dull, but in a serious fight it would leave bruises and broken bones. Hit someone in the head, or in the chest with enough force, or in the gut just right, and you could kill them.

If pressed, would he have Kenshin's ability to say _I will not kill _unto even his own death? Or would he flip the sword around, a blade that had never shed blood, and defend himself? He didn't know. He didn't want to find out.

Just before he'd boarded the boat, he'd asked his father, "What if I'm in a fight where I have to kill, where I have no choice?"

Yahiko had shrugged. "Well, that's why the sword's got a sharp side, Shinya."

"Penny for your thoughts," Chiyoko said, flopping down on the grass beside him and startling him a bit. She had on a boy's kimono and hakama; she'd probably been rambling in the countryside earlier, with or without Kenshin.

"I'm just wondering why Kenshin carries a sakabatou if he's sworn never to kill, instead of an iaito. You'd think an iaito would be more symbolic. No sharp edge at all."

"The sakabatou makes a dandy letter opener," Chiyoko lay on her back, fingers laced behind her head.

Shinya laughed.

"Seriously, having a sharp side to the blade is useful. You ever see him chop wood with that thing? He can take a good sized tree down with one blow. And he can cut through rope or chop open doors or ..." she shrugged.

"You're not taking the subject very seriously."

"I've never really thought about it." She rolled over onto her stomach and rested her chin on her hands and looked up at him. "Marshall's coming next week."

"Oooh," he teased, "You sound _excited _about that."

"Shut up!" She stuck her tongue out at him. "He's my friend. That's all. And he's the only Immortal I know besides Kenshin and he tells me stuff that Kenshin won't."

She hesitated, then added, "You don't need to be jealous of Marshall, Shinya. He's just a friend. He's _ancient_, anyway. He doesn't even begin to measure up to you."

He looked sideways at her, startled by the forthrightness of her words.

Chiyoko had sat up; somehow, she had scooted closer to him. She was watching him intently, obviously waiting for his response.

It would have been very easy for him to set the sword aside, lean over, and kiss her. She wanted that -- he knew if he kissed her again, she'd melt against him, hands touching him, body pressing against his, eager and welcoming. And it would feel good -- he remembered holding her, and being held by her, before. The contact had felt good, particularly when she'd slid her hands up under his clothing and across the bare skin of his back and she had ground her stomach tight against him.

Yeah. That had felt very good.

But it hadn't felt _right_. And Chi-chan deserved _right_.

"Chiyoko ..." He couldn't bring himself to hurt her feelings, to shove her away. She was his friend. He could see the wounded pain in her eyes now if told her, _No, not ever, not me_.

But a life with Chiyoko -- it wasn't what he wanted. He closed his eyes for a moment, not trusting himself to speak or look at her.

He cared about her so very much; she was one of the few people he'd ever known that he could truly _talk _to. It was breaking his heart to envision telling her, _No_ -- to tell her that the happy dreams he knew she had of the two of them would never happen. And part of him very much _wanted _to be able to tell her 'Yes! Let's get married! Let's live forever together, adopt some kids, buy a house, be ordinary!'

Except he just didn't _want _that. At least, not with _her_.

Maybe if he waited long enough, she'd lose interest in him as a potential husband and go find someone else. Then he wouldn't have to hurt her. It wasn't like he'd promised her anything. Right?

He issued a mental prayer that a Prince Charming would happen along and sweep Chi-chan off her feet and get _him _off the hook. And then he simply changed the subject. "Hey, have you seen the kittens in the stable? They're adorable."

"Kittens?" It worked; she perked up. "Where?"

"C'mon, I'll show you. I promised Byron I'd take them up to his room again after lunch, anyway." He rose and offered her a hand up.

-------------------

There were children playing in the garden -- Byron watched them out the window of his room, and wished he could be that young and innocent again. Mrs. Kamiya's pack of children were well-behaved and obviously cared a great deal for one another. They were playing follow-the-leader at the moment, with the youngest, Yukio, in the lead.

He was puffed up and proud to have the task of guiding a train of his older siblings around. All of the kids were giggling as they followed him. Then, after a moment, they collapsed on the grass, degenerating into a pile of horseplay and tickling.

Someone knocked at the door to his room; he startled half out of his seat, then winced when that sudden movement pulled at the healing scar tissue on his back. It stung painfully.

"Yes?" He said, voice carefully controlled. He rose and moved to the desk in the room, hoping it would look as if he had been reading the newspaper Chiyoko had brought him earlier. (And Chiyoko was a mystery; he was trying to figure out where a Japanese-born teenage girl had become nearly completely fluent in English, both written and spoken.)

"It's Jessica, Lord Byron."

His heart sank. He'd been dreading this conversation with the lady of the house. But he put on the most stoic face he could manage given that his eyes were probably still puffy from his absolutely disgraceful display from the day before. "Come in. I'm decent."

Jessica Marshall entered, leaving the door open behind her. She was, he thought, a rather impressive woman -- in a scary, assertive, intimidating sort of way.

"How are you doing?" she asked, voice surprisingly gentle.

He blinked at her. Not the question he'd been expecting from her. He'd been anticipating something closer to, _When are you leaving_? Sarcasm seemed called for. "Absolutely delightful. And yourself?"

This response made Jessica smile, to his relief. "I'm sorry, let me rephrase that: are you doing better than before? Kenji told me what happened."

He winced. He'd hoped his brother and Shinya would be discrete, but obviously not. In any event, the servants had doubtless been watching from the house's windows. He said tightly, "I imagine everyone knows about yesterday."

"Well, you did provide the day's gossip for the servants," she confirmed his supposition as she sat down on the foot of his bed. "They ought to thank you; life was getting boring. I think they'd run out of things to talk about pertaining to the Kamiyas."

Her tone was dry, and, somehow, commiserating. He didn't know how to respond to that, so he simply shrugged.

"Don't worry about it, Lord Byron. And in truth I imagine you've survived worse embarrassment in your life."

She was trying very hard to make him comfortable, he realized -- which meant, since this was Jessica, a bit of unsubtle teasing. "Miss Marshall," he said, politely, "I do thank you for your hospitality."

"Nonsense. You'll be my brother-in-law in a few months. You're part of the family." She smiled brightly. "I'm rather looking forward to not being the greatest object of rumor and innuendo. Because I'm usually the one everyone's talking about."

He just looked at her. He knew she was trying to be ... reassuring ... but it wasn't exactly working.

She blew out a sudden sharp sigh and grew more serious. "Lord Byron, I am well aware of your reputation. My mother has filled me in on the details. You are something of a laughingstock of society, as I'm sure you know, and she does love a good bit of scandal and juicy gossip."

"The details." He wondered _which _details she meant. How many times had he been humiliated in public by one or the other of his brothers, or Sir Basil, or various and sundry members of the peerage?

"She told me that you were caught by Sir Basil and a few of his friends in a delicate situation when you were fifteen -- in a copse of woods, am I right?"

He closed his eyes, remembering Jake. Yeah. That was right.

"Then Sir Basil beat you within an inch of your life and had the boy imprisoned on charges of indecent acts, plus some likely false charges of theft."

"The charges were not true," he confirmed. It had been eight years and the pain still felt as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. The 'theft' had been a few small but valuable items that were identifiably his, but which had been found in Jake's home. He'd given them as gifts to his dearest friend.

He hadn't been allowed to testify at the trial to tell the truth that Jake was no thief. He hadn't been charged himself; Jake had been a few years older and they'd claimed he'd 'taken advantage of a younger boy' -- which hadn't been what had happened, at all.

Jessica sighed. "I expected as much. I read the boy's testimony."

"He died in prison," Byron said, unwillingly. "Just before Christmas two years ago."

Jessica ran a hand over her face. "I'm sorry."

"Are you? He was just a little fag boy." The words were bitter on his tongue. Because Jake had been so much more. Jake had been the _one person _in his life who'd actually cared about him, who had always been there. He'd known Jake for most of his life -- the son of the a local doctor, they'd grown up together.

Jessica frowned at him. It was an odd expression, full of concentration and thought. He realized she was choosing her words carefully "I'm sorry any time there's an injustice, Byron. What has happened to you is wrong."

"Yeah," he agreed.

She shook her head. "I'm going to tell you something, Lord Byron -- and that is that I don't care who you fuck." The word was raw, and from an upperclass woman's mouth, utterly unexpected. He gave her a very startled look, knowing she'd chosen trhem for shock value. "It's none of my business -- except that I want you to realize that my Kenji, and his family, _do not _understand our world. If you stay here I ask that you give me your word that you will be discrete in any ... activities ... that you chose to partake in. They will defend you if you find yourself in trouble again, and I do not wish anyone hurt or in legal trouble."

He'd been celibate for eight years. He snorted. "_That _is not going to be a problem."

And the thought of being _defended_ ... was strange. But he knew she was telling the truth. Shinta, Kenji, and Shinya had certainly closed ranks against Basil yesterday. This was a family that stuck up for each other, and somehow, they'd decided he was worthy of adoption.

He very much feared that sooner or later they'd realize they'd made a mistake and disown him. Probably, this would happen sooner. But ...

_You'll be my brother-in-law_ she'd said.

"Good." She hesitated. "One other thing -- I noticed you watching Shinta yesterday, out the window, when he was doing katas on the lawn."

"I wasn't!" He denied, panicked, because he _had _been. Here it came: the disgust that would degenerate into mocking at best, violence at worst.

"You were!" she said. She almost looked amused, to his shock. If she was making fun of him, it was in a very gentle way. She smiled. "Don't bother with any effort there. He won't be interested."

Byron tried to answer, spluttered helplessly, took a deep breath, and said, "Don't tell him! Please!"

Jessica laughed, a merry peal. "Sorry, Byron, I already teased Shinta about it. He makes the funniest noises when you hassle him."

"Oh, _God_," he wanted to crawl off and die somewhere of humiliation. His face was aflame and his heart was racing. He might think Shinta was remarkably good looking, but he was also terrifyingly scary when he was angry -- he'd seen those amber eyes and that cold, calculating reaction to Basil's arrival yesterday. He never, ever wanted to be on the receiving side of that glare!

She shook her head, "Oh, don't worry. Shinta's very Japanese despite the hair -- I don't think he's the slightest bit offended. But he's got a sweetheart -- and she'd probably take his head off at the shoulders if he ever contemplated straying, which he'd never do, in any case. He's most devoted to her."

"I, uh, umm ..."

"You look remarkably like Kenji when you blush like that."

He shut his mouth. There was no malice in her words, and he was a master at detecting ill intent. Still, her words had made him suspicious that a betrayal would soon follow. Would she turn vicious?

She brushed her blond hair back over her shoulder. "In any event, my uncle will be here in six days' time. I'll be having a party that night, with my friends and family and some business associates. You're welcome to attend."

"Uh?" That had been unexpected.

She took it as a yes. "Good."

"I have no ... party clothes."

She waved her hand dismissively. "I know you have nothing and I'm guessing that retrieving your things from home isn't going to be easy. Once you're on your feet again, I can send you into town to the tailor."

"I have no money."

"I do. And you're family. I see no problem with helping you, Lord Byron. If you're not too proud to accept it."from me

He was being razzed again. This time, he held his arms out wide and attempted a bit of a response in kind. "I could attend your party clad only in my _pride_ but it might alarm people."

She snickered. "That would _definitely _distract the gossips from me."

-------------------

Kenshin sat quietly with his back to the tree in the garden.

With his eyes closed, it was amazing what he could hear.

There were birds, in the trees -- they were different than Japan. He remained fascinated by the difference in songbirds despite a month of observation. There were insect eaters, seed eaters, fruit eaters, just like home. They filled the same roles. But they were not the same species. Why, he wondered, were the birds not the same? There was much variety in the world.

The wind rustled through the leaves of the tree. It was a cherry that he was reclined against, reminding him of home -- of the cherry trees by the river that bloomed every spring. However, other trees around the property were completely unfamiliar. There were flowers in the garden that he'd never seen before, as well, and the vegetable beds by the kitchen held plants he couldn't identify.

But the wind was familiar. It was a warm summer day, and he could imagine he was home, seated on the dojo's steps, if he tried hard enough. His imagination filled in the scene easily -- Sanosuke asleep against the wall, a half-finished game of _Go_ between them. Kaoru would be inside yelling at a class of students, and the laundry would be flapping in the breeze, drying. Puffy clouds floated overhead.

But the dojo was gone forever, Sanosuke was dead, and he was a very, very long way from home.

He wondered if the breeze brushing his upturned cheeks had ever gently wafted over Japan on a warm spring day. Had it touched home? How far had it traveled?

The air stilled and now he could hear voices.

Shinya, chuckling. Chiyoko, teasing. Shinya, laughing harder. He was glad the two teens had forged such a close friendship. If they chose marriage, he would support them happily. However, if they chose simple comfort in each other's presence for awhile, he resolved to overlook that-- they, too, were a long way from home, isolated from everything they'd known before, and it wasn't as if a child might result.

He thought that whatever happened between them, in the end, they would remain close friends. They would be good for each other. He wasn't worried about them -- he trusted both of them, they cared about and respected one another, and anything that happened between them would work out.

Bessie, the maid, was arguing the kitchen help. Her voice distracted him from listening to the kids. He focused on the English.

Language, he decided, was a bit like a swordfight. There was a rhythm and a pattern to it. To the uninitiated, a fight was simply a mess of swinging blades and hacking blows. But a battle between two swordsmen was a dance. Things happened in a specific order -- you learned not single blows but a series of moves. A step _here, _and a move _there, _and a strike _like that_.

Patterns in a swordfight were like sentences in language. Little nuances changed the meaning of the words, or the outcome of a fight.

English was to Japanese what the Kamiya school of swordsmanship was to Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu. They were simply two different styles, two different _languages_.

He listened to the servants, not to be a voyeur, but to learn the language.

Someday in the far future, maybe he'd even be proficient.


	49. Chapter 49

Author's Notes-- Blog, including thoughts on characters and new chapters at ljmouse dot livejournal dot com.

-------------------

Somehow, tending Byron's wounds had become Shinya's duty. He didn't mind; he felt bad for Byron, and he knew he'd be gentler than anyone else. He was good at this sort of thing; always had been. He'd thought of becoming a physician like Megumi a few times, but he wasn't sure he could handle the heartbreak that went with that job. He wouldn't be able to handle losing patients or breaking terribly bad news to people. It would hurt too much.

He'd been a bit disconcerted by the snickering from the servants when he'd collected a tray with _two _breakfasts on it from the kitchen. Kenshin had suggested he eat with Byron as well as tend to his wounds to keep him company; the servants were taking it _entirely _the wrong way.

Baka.

He shoved open the door to Byron's room with his foot. The young lord was seated in a chair, reading a book. Shinya took note of the book, which appeared to be half finished, and assumed this meant that Byron had been up and wandering the house last night and had found the library. Quite possibly, he was in too much pain to sleep.

Last night, Byron had pointedly turned down an offer of laudanum from Jessica. He said he didn't like having a fuzzy head.

It was also obvious that he'd just woken up now because his hair -- just as frizzy as Kenji's -- was flattened on one side and standing on end on the other.

Shinya snickered, regarding that hair. "Want comb? Your hair ..." he gestured with his hands over his head after setting the trays down on the bed, indicating, essentially, _Poof!_

"Do you have one?" Lord Byron said with apparent relief.

"I'll get in a minute. Your back, now, and eat." He set the trays down on the bed.

Byron sighed, shrugged out of his borrowed nightshirt, and twisted around so he was sitting sideways on the chair. Shinya, as gently as he could, started cleaning the stripes left by the beating. Most were going to leave new scars, but at least they were starting to heal. The infection was gone; the medication Megumi had sent with them was working. Byron's eyes were no longer fever bright. He was stronger.

"How do you feel?"

"Better."

"Jessica wants you go into town and get clothes, other things." Shinya said. "We go today, two hours."

Byron nodded. "She told me that. She's ... kind."

----------------

The trip into town quickly turned into an expedition, to Shinya's amusement.

Upon hearing that Shinya intended to go shopping with Byron, Chiyoko announced _she _wanted to come because she wanted to buy some embroidery floss. Kenji chimed in, indicating he needed stationary. Kaoru was hoping to find some trousers for Yukio, who had outgrown nearly everything they'd brought from Japan -- which wasn't much, in any case.

He wasn't sure what Kenshin wanted, but 'Shinta' was riding between Kaoru and Chiyoko in the carriage, violet eyes half closed, looking almost asleep. He'd spent a lot of time looking _almost asleep _lately; Shinya was worried about Kenshin, and he knew he wasn't the only one.

Byron was seated against the wall, shoulder to shoulder with Shinya. The young lord kept glancing at Kenshin then hastily looking away. There was quite a bit of color in his cheeks. Shinya couldn't figure out if Byron was admiring Kenshin or was terrified of him.

Of course, Shinya understood, it was possible to do _both_.

Not that Shinya could ever personally imagine being terrified of Kenshin. All he had to do to dispel _scared of Kenshin_ thoughts was to picture Kenshin Himura with his arms up to the elbows in a bucket of soapy water, doing the laundry.

_Which_, Shinya thought, _is not something he can do here -- Jessica has multiple maids for that. _

The lack of _work _might explain why Kenshin had been so quiet lately. Kenshin liked to work and he had to be missing it.

----------------------

The town had a small, but bustling, street market.

Kenshin found it oddly familiar. Oh, the architecture was different for the buildings, and the language was alien. Many of the wares were familiar, however, in a general sense -- food, pretty baubles, second-hand clothing, flowers, shoes, hats, patent medicines, more baubles, books, cloth, and much more.

Many of the same things would have been for sale in Tokyo.

He stared about, taking it all in. The foreign-but-familiar element was intriguing.

Chiyoko was half a block behind him, examining a tray of cheap jewelry held by a poorly dressed man. He was aware of her Immortal ki; it made it easy to keep track of her. Kaoru, ahead, was bargaining in broken English over the cost of a bolt of cloth. Kenji and Shinya had found a stall selling folding pocket knives and -- when Kenshin glanced their way -- he was reminded of their much younger selves. They were examining a particularly nice specimen of pocket knife under the watchful eye of the vendor, and debating its merits in Japanese. Vigorously.

Byron, a few feet away, examined a tray of cufflinks. Kenshin saw him glance sideways at the other two young men, as if he was longing to join their conversation. To Kenshin's approval, Kenji and Shinya both caught that glance and promptly switched to English and stepped aside to make room for him at the counter of knives.

Discussing the knives quickly changed to _story-telling_, by the gestures Kenji was making -- something about throwing knives, he thought, or possibly throwing stars. He was too far away to hear everything, but he seemed to remember a story about a bet that Kenji had lost with Misao years before. Likely, he was telling that one.

Something about knives in general brought the _boy _out in the man ...

Though they did appear to be particularly fine pocket knives. He headed for the display, wondering if he could afford one with the spending money that he'd (reluctantly) accepted from Jessica. They were certainly practical. Maybe one with a handle inset with mother of pearl ... something nicely and ridiculously gaudy to match the bejeweled sakabatou currently riding under his overcoat.

While he examined a nice knife, Kaoru purchased several yards of cloth. He reluctantly decided against the pocket knife; it was a frivolous purchase -- though they _were _beautifully made. Maybe he'd buy one for Kenji as a surprise, later.

Somewhat regretfully, he continued down the road, following Kaoru as she bought more things. Clothing, mostly, for the children;

It was a lovely day, for once -- the sun was out and shining and everyone seemed to be in a good mood. He glanced back in time to see Chiyoko poke Shinya in the ribs; tickled, he squawked in surprise and darted away from her. Shinya reminded Kenshin of a leggy colt -- skinny, nearly done with his vertical growing but not yet muscled like an adult, all legs and arms and oversized hands and feet.

He was so thin that, turn him sideways, Kenji teased, and he'd disappear. Kenshin thought that Yahiko's son would get quite a bit broader yet, particularly through his shoulders.

Chiyoko caught the end of Shinya's ponytail before he could get away from her, and towed him down the road by it, to the amusement of bystanders who made ribald suggestions. Chi-chan was yelling mock-insults at him in Japanese, sounding far more furious than she really was.

Shinya's ponytail was long enough that he managed to completely twist around, tickle her ribs until she let go, and then pick her up and sling her over his shoulder.

"Shinya! Put me down!" she spluttered, much to the amusement of their audience. Applause burst out on the street.

"Make me!" he retorted.

Now, Kenshin knew that Chiyoko could certainly break free. He waited, wondering what she would do.

"Shinya! This is undignified!"

"Leading me around by my hair isn't?" He sounded a lot angrier when he said that than he really was; Kenshin could see the mischief in his eyes.

"I'm sorry!"

Kenshin wondered if Chiyoko had forgotten that she was very nearly a master of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu -- or was she deliberately restraining herself? He wasn't sure.

"Yeah, yeah, you are ..." he kept walking with Chiyoko flung over one shoulder.

She goosed him, suddenly, arms reaching down to his midriff. Shinya yelped in surprise, shied sideways and frantically dropped her, almost tossing her away from him -- and she landed on her hands and flipped neatly to her feet.

"Shinya no baka!" She had her hands on her hips.

He just laughed, and started walking away. She stalked after him, shouting viler insults at him.

"... and I hate your hair, too!" she concluded.

"Oh," he turned around, and walked backwards, "you _love _my hair, and you know it, Chi-chan."

That stopped her in her tracks, likely because it was true. Her reaction betrayed just how much she was in love with his hair (or at least in lust). She turned bright red, suddenly, then spluttered, "Baka! Baka! Baka!"

"And ..." Kaoru murmured beside him, "... round one goes to Shinya."

"She adores him," Kenshin said, with a low laugh. "And his ponytail."

"I prefer yours," she said, giving him a teasing look. Very low, too quiet for anyone else to hear, she murmured, "I prefer your hair _down _even more."

He blushed. Furiously. He cupped his hand behind his head and regarded her with awe and amusement embarrassment all mixed together. Her words ... he knew exactly what she was thinking. Fifty-three years old, he thought ruefully, and the attention of his beloved wife could still make him blush just like she was sixteen and he was an shy rurouni again.

She shoved her packages at him. Said, in the same quiet, _promising_, tone of voice, "Koishii, come to my room after everyone else has gone to bed. I miss my husband."

"Yes, Kaoru-dono ..." he said, meekly.

She snorted in response to the _dono_. "Will you take those back to the carriage?"

It took him a minute to realize she was talking about her purchases; his blood was elsewhere than his brain. He held the boxes lower. The thought of sneaking into his own wife's room sometime after midnight for a secret tryst in the dark was ... exciting. In more ways than one.

Grinning what he knew was a very goofy rurouni grin, he obediently headed off to take her purchases to the carriage.

--------------------

Fifteen minutes later, he walked through the market, having accomplished his mission for Kaoru. He could see Kenji and Byron far ahead, both of them a head taller than the average height of the customers in the market. Their red hair was unmistakable, and Byron's head bobbed as he walked due to his limp.

They vanished around a corner. He knew where they were headed; the tailor's shop was a few blocks from the street market. He slowed, seeing no point in running after them. He had on an overcoat to conceal his sword, and the day was a bit warm. He would end up sweaty and overheated if he hurried.

The city street led past a church on a fairly large lot; he'd taken note of it as _Holy Ground _the first time they'd come to town, weeks ago. It wasn't the church where Mrs. Marshall worshipped, and -- not having sorted out the many different and conflicting flavors of Christianity -- he wasn't sure of the denomination.

Aesthetically speaking, he thought it was a beautiful building. It was made from cut blocks of stone with beautiful stained glass windows and a steep, slate-covered roof. It had a steeple, a small graveyard, and, very old trees around it.

He was nearly past when he felt the buzz of another Immortal.

He stopped dead, wondering if Chiyoko was inside. Had they entered the church for some reason?

Curiosity piqued, he walked up to the church's front door and pushed it open.

Only one man was inside -- tall, thin, but kneeling before a bank of candles. He wore the garb of a priest. and he rose and turned slowly around and studied Kenshin with frank curiosity. Finally, he said, "Welcome, wanderer. You're a very long way from home."

He spoke in Japanese. Kenshin was shocked, both because the man _spoke _Japanese and because he'd correctly identified Kenshin's nationality despite his rather non-stereotypical appearance.

"My name is Himura Kenshin," Kenshin said, very politely. "I am sorry to have disturbed you. I thought my ward may be in here when I sensed your _ki_."

This Immortal was like no one he'd met before. He had an indefinable aura of age and _goodness_. A holy man, Kenshin thought, and he was very, very old. He was awed by that sense of _holy_.

His words earned him a bright smile. "You are disturbing me -- not at all. My name is Father Darius, Himura-san. Come, join me for a minute. I have a kettle about to boil. Would you like tea?"

On cue, a teapot began to whistle.

Darius's _ki_ was the purest Kenshin had ever felt. And he was a bit surprised to find that sense of great good coming from a Christian priest; so far, he'd been thoroughly unimpressed by most of the clergy he'd met. Kenshin said, with honest regret, "I am very sorry. I must catch up with my family. But -- might I come by later?"

"Certainly!" Darius said. "I'll looking forward to it."


	50. Chapter 50

-------------------

Kaoru's head rested on his shoulder, dark hair spilling across his chest. They hadn't dared light a lamp -- and he _missed _seeing as well as feeling and doing -- but he could feel the soft whisper of her breath across his chest. Her hand rested comfortably on his stomach and one leg was thrown over his knees.

He wanted to fall asleep in her embrace. He was safe, here. Whatever else happened in his world, Kaoru was his center, his anchor. His rock.

"I met an Immortal today," he whispered, very low.

She stiffened in alarm. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because there's not been a chance to mention it to you before, in private. I'm not going to spread this widely; do not tell the others. I do not believe that he would appreciate it if his identity became known, that he would not. But I want you to know that if it becomes gossip that I am spending time with a local priest, this is why."

"A priest?"

"He's very old, Kaoru. You can sense it, that you can. I am ... curious." Kenshin stroked her hair.

"What if he ..." she trailed off, unable even to speak the words.

He snorted a low laugh. "Tries to take my head? I have nothing to fear from Darius. He does not have any trace of a warrior's _ki_. He is a gentle man. And -- he speaks Japanese, fluently, with no trace of an accent. And he knew I was both wanderer and Japanese myself without being told. As I said, I am curious. Most curious."

She relaxed a bit. "Your judgment of people is usually excellent. Just be careful, koishii. I've no desire to bury you in two pieces."

Kenshin's chuckle was silent, but his chest shook.

"It's not funny!" she said, low and urgent, and swatted him.

Her smack led to other things. He made love to her for a second time, tenderly, reveling in this chance to be himself and not young Shinta Kamiya just for a bit. This was his wife, and he loved her, and he belonged _here_, in her bed, in her arms, with their love for each other bringing them both to shuddering completion.

He dozed, after, until she nudged him awake. "It's almost dawn, koishii. You'd best go back to your room before the servants rise."

She was right. He rose, grabbed his sleeping yukata off the floor, and pulled it on. "I shall see you at breakfast, my love."

"Mmm." She said. "I hate it here, Kenshin. I _miss _having you as my husband, openly. This sneaking around ... feels wrong."

"I know," he said, miserably. He wished he had income of his own so he could, at least, get a small house for them. He craved privacy, and there was none, in this big house. "I know, koishii, that I do."

----------------

Darius was in the small building behind the church when Kenshin arrived the following evening at dusk. He followed the sense of Immortal _ki _unerringly.

"Come in, Himura-san," Darius called, as he approached the door.

He pushed it open and let himself in. Inside, there was a desk, a table, a narrow bed. Books lined the walls, and maps, and various antiques sat on shelves. To Kenshin's surprise there was a _Go _board set up on a table.

There were no weapons.

"Darius-sama," he said, politely, "am I intruding?"

"Not at all. I was hoping you would come by." Darius smiled at him. "I believe that I've heard of you."

"Most of the stories are ... not accurate," Kenshin said, cautiously. "Many things attributed to this one did not happen, or were done by others, that they were. But I've done enough evil, yes, and now I atone."

Darius waved his hand dismissively. "You didn't defeat Connor MacLeod and then let him walk away?"

Kenshin grinned. He'd thought Darius was referring to his history as a hitokiri. "Oh. That. Hai."

"He probably had it coming." Darius smiled easily, and walked over to a cabinet where he removed a bottle of wine and two glasses.

"He tried to kill this one, that he did, to make his point. I objected."

"Hideo sent me a letter mentioning that," Darius mused. "I haven't seen Connor in a few years, but Hideo is usually accurate. He said you were very young but very promising."

"Hideo -- in Kyoto?" Kenshin asked. Somehow, he wasn't surprised this priest and the other Immortal knew each other. Well, if Hideo had given an accurate description of his appearance, it explained how Darius knew he was Japanese. There couldn't be that many Immortals in the world, and few of them would be five feet tall with red hair and a scarred cheek.

"Yes. He's a bit of a crusty old soldier, but we get along well enough. -- I was most surprised to see you on this side of the ocean, however." Darius gestured at the table with the _Go _board on it. "Do you play?"

"Aa, this one plays."

"Will you indulge me in a round? It's been a very long time since I have had anyone to play against. I spent a long time in the Far East centuries ago and learned it then; it is a fascinating game."

Kenshin sat down in front of the board. Darius claimed the other chair and handed him a glass of the red wine. Kenshin sipped it cautiously; he'd grown up on sake, and found grape wine rather weak in comparison, as far as alcohol content went, but sometimes it had unpleasantly strong flavors. This wine was excellent, and he said so as Darius made the first move on the board.

"Thank you," Darius said, in a tone that hinted to Kenshin that Darius might well have made the wine himself. "So, what brings a former hitokiri to these shores?"

Kenshin winced. Apparently, Hideo had told Darius everything about him. Not that his identity was a secret -- in Japan. Here, he preferred to keep a very low profile.

Darius chuckled. "You _are _the Hitokiri Battousai, correct? That is what Hideo said."

"Once. I left that name behind a long time ago," Kenshin said, warily. "I am merely Himura Kenshin -- or here, I am Shinta Kamiya, a young man who is visiting England with his relatives."

"Mmm. Hideo said that you refuse to play the Game. You are most wise, Himura-san."

He closed his eyes, briefly. "I'm almost two thousand years old, Himura-san. I've _killed _in my life. Believe me on this, for I know -- one such as yourself should never take a Quickening. You may not survive it sane or with your identity intact." He opened one eye, regarded Kenshin for a moment, then said, "Mind, the life expectancy of an Immortal who does not kill tends to be very low, on average. But you may be an exception to that rule. You have a strength to you. Hideo commented on it, and I agree -- you are _strong _all on your own, without ever killing another of us."

"You needn't worry, Darius-sama. This one is sworn never to take another life. And I am a swordsman good enough to handle most who would Challenge me without killing them -- permanently. I believe the spirit of my oath to never kill does not cover temporary deaths, that it does not."

Darius chuckled. "Likely not."

Kenshin was a little uncomfortable with Darius's attention on his history. He tasted his wine carefully -- he had no desire for a fuzzy head -- and pushed a stone forward on the game board. Then he changed the subject, "Darius-sama, you have lived two thousand years?"

Darius nodded.

"That's ..." Kenshin trailed off. In two millenia, would he even remember Kaoru?

"That's a very long time," Darius agreed, quietly. "You're thinking of your loved ones, are you not?"

"Aa." Someday, they would all be dead except for Chiyoko.

"You never forget the ones you love, Himura-san. They will be with you always. But you will love again, and again, and each person will be dear to you, close to your heart, a part of you. You cannot dwell in the past; you must continue to forge new bonds of friendship, affection and love as time passes. And in doing so, you will ground yourself in the mortal world. That is very important. You cannot ever forget that you are simply a man."

------------

Hours passed. Darius was good company, Kenshin discovered, and nothing at all like he'd envisioned a Christian priest to be. Of course, he hadn't always been a Christian priest -- Darius commented quietly that he went where he was needed; right now, he was needed and most useful here.

Kenshin was pleased to find that Darius was quite knowledgeable about both Shinto and Buddhism and they had a pleasant conversation about the differences in philosophy between them and Christianity for quite awhile.

The conversation answered a few questions he'd had about the Brits and their somewhat baffling culture and beliefs. And never once did Darius imply he was _less _for not being Christian. Kenshin appreciated that. He himself was not the most religious of men, and he'd resented several attempts to preach at him by various people, including Mrs. Marshall.

The priest had a dry wit that did not diminish his deep _reverence_ for life and a higher power.

"I don't know what we are," Darius said, quietly, when Kenshin summoned the nerve to ask. "I've never known. I've sought answer to that question and never found an explanation. There are precedents, of course, in the Bible, and in the teachings of other religions, but I do not know if they are allegory or fact." He grinned, suddenly. "Christians would believe the Bible is the gospel truth. Having _lived _a good bit of that history, I'll tell _you _it's more symbolic than literal. But that's not something I could say to most good Christians in this time and place ... as far as Immortality goes, I've come to view it as a gift -- it's certainly given me many opportunities that I never would have had, otherwise."

If Darius didn't know the answer to, _What are Immortals_? Kenshin concluded reluctantly that maybe nobody could tell him. Because this was one of the most educated and well-traveled men he'd ever had the fortune to speak to.

"Persia," he answered, to Kenshin's question about where he'd been born. "Originally. A very long time ago." A twinkle touched his eyes. "I rather sympathize with your comment about half your history belonging to someone else. I barely recognize myself in the history books."

Kenshin, who wasn't _completely _uneducated, widened his eyes at that. The only question was _which_ historic Darius he was, then, and Kenshin wasn't sure the details exactly mattered except that he suspected now that Darius had rounded his age down by a few centuries. "Oro! I take it calling you Darius-sama is appropriate, then, that it is."

Darius had sputtered a laugh and poured both of them another glass of wine.

Yes, Kenshin decided, he had a new friend.

Later, the talk turned to Byron -- who, it turned out, Darius knew rather well. He sighed when Kenshin mentioned Byron was living with them. "It's about time the lad had a turn of good luck."

"He's had it rough, hasn't he?"

"Yes. And I'll warn you, Himura-san -- in my experience, young men who are that damaged rarely do well in life. Sometimes, one will surprise you, but ..." Darius ran a hand over his face. "He comes here, sometimes. He's spoken to me in the confessional, which means, of course, I can't tell you about his troubles. But -- I'm glad that he's found you and your family, and I caution you to be careful with his relatives."

Kenshin shook his head. "I'm no innocent, Darius. I ... have a good idea what to expect from that family, that I do. I worry about my son, because Kenji has had a relatively sheltered life. But as for me, I _know _there is evil there. The exact form may vary slightly, but the overall result will be that of a cesspool of misery for all those involved, that it will."

Darius grunted agreement. "But for all that, he's not a bad boy, in truth."

"There's no malice in his heart, no. -- Can you tell me a bit about his history? He doesn't talk about his past and I'd like to know, that I would," Kenshin studied the _Go _board for a moment, then made a move.

Darius drained a remaining quarter of a glass of wine and poured himself more, before answering. "I can tell you what is general knowledge --" he hesitated, then added, "-- and do it without slanting the story. Do not underestimate the level of hatred many of his peers have for that boy."

"Thank you, Darius-sama."

"He was two when he contracted infantile paralysis. It was believed he would never walk again, and he did not, until he was five or six. I am quite impressed by how well he does with that cane. -- This is _not _common knowledge, but it was not told to me in confidence, so I can tell you that he does not wear a brace on that leg because his brothers have broken them too many times. They do find it so very entertaining to reduce him to tears, and destroying the brace for his leg is one easy way for them to do so.

"If he's staying with you, you may wish to have a brace made for him. He'd do better with one -- he doesn't need a cane when he has one, except when he is very tired."

Kenshin blinked at that, gritted his teeth, and said, "_Thank you_ for that information."

"As I said, he's not a bad boy. I wish I could have helped him more, over the years." Darius steepled his fingers together for a moment, then said, "His physician had a boy his age, Jake, who had a poor constitution -- asthma, mostly. The physician correctly judged that Byron needed a friend as much as he needed medical care and he would bring Jake to play with Byron under the guise of treatments. The boys got along very well. I suspect Jake -- and Dr. Connor -- were among the very few people who Byron ever really trusted.

"Later, Byron was sent to boarding school. Jake went with him, and the two boys shared a room for several years." Darius's regarded Kenshin from beneath half-lowered eyelids as he said dryly, "Apparently, when they hit puberty, they began to share other things, as well."

Kenshin laughed. "Apparently."

"At any rate, I suspect those years were the happiest of Byron's life. As a peer, with money, he was well treated by the school's staff and at least tolerated by other students. I don't think he had many close friends other than Jake, however. Those two were inseparable. Perhaps it would have been more healthy for Byron to have had more friends, but at least he had Jake."

Darius swirled his wine around in his glass for a moment. "When he was fifteen, he and Jake returned home on holiday. Unwisely, they had a tryst in the woods. Sir Basil, who had already been accusing them of improper behavior, followed Byron and caught them in a carnal act."

The priest shook his head. "Most families here would have hushed it up. There was no need to make a public spectacle of the boys. But Basil is ... mean. I warn you, Kenshin, that man has a very large amount of anger in his soul and, for whatever reason 'immoral acts' trigger an very venomous response from him. He declared he would save Byron's soul at any cost -- and then told everyone who would listen what Byron and Jake had been doing. I am not certain how public humiliation would serve to save Byron's soul."

Darius sipped at his wine and continued, "Jake was arrested on charges of indecency, plus theft. I do not believe that the charges of theft were anything but false as Jake was accused of stealing items from Byron's room at the school. Byron stated publicly on numerous occasions that he had _given _Jake some of his things." Darius pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment before continuing. "Jake was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in jail. However, he did not survive to his release date. He passed away two years ago of pneumonia -- and something in Byron died with him."

"And Basil has been tormenting Byron since?"

"Oh, he was tormenting him before that point. All of his family was. Byron's an easy target -- he cries when he's angry, and this amuses his siblings and his cousin. They think it's very funny to provoke him."

Kenshin growled under his breath.

"Hnnh, yes, my sentiments exactly. But Basil began a campaign of isolation -- he's a very controlling man, and Byron was a perfect subject for this. Nobody likes him ..."

"... I like him ..." Kenshin said, softly.

"Yes. But nobody in his family or among his peers like him. And quote 'curing Byron of his eonist tendencies' unquote made a perfect excuse for Basil to torture the poor boy. I tried to appeal to his grandfather, mind, but Viscount Trevor sides with Basil in most matters."

Kenshin frowned. "Thank you, Darius-sama."

They talked of other things until the night was very late. Kenshin left the rectory more than a little drunk, but pleased to have met an Immortal that he truly and genuinely _liked_. He knew he would be back later.

---------------------

Shinya couldn't sleep. A thousand thoughts swirled through his head; worries about Chiyoko and Byron, memories of home, bits and snatches of English phrases that he was trying to learn. Thoughts of his parents were mixed in there, as well, and his younger siblings. His youngest sister ought to be starting school soon. His eldest sister, at sixteen, was seriously considering offers of marriage from two different boys and had sent him a long, chatty letter discussing the merits of the young men.

He knew both of them, approved of both of them, would welcome either as a brother-in-law. But the thought of his sister getting married with him gone was disheartening. He was missing so much ... possibly, she'd be married already when she received his reply.

After an hour of tossing and turning he sat up and turned the lamp beside his bed up. If he couldn't sleep he might as well check on Byron and then go find something productive to do. Maybe he'd write some more letters back to his parents and siblings.

Byron's room was two doors down the hall from his. As quietly as possible he opened the door a crack -- and discovered Byron wasn't in bed. Well, that wasn't entirely a surprise. Evidence had suggested Byron had been up and wandering the house yesterday night, too.

Yawning a bit, Shinya went in search of Kenji's brother. If he was going to have insomnia, at least it could be insomnia with company.

When he reached the stairs he heard the faint tinkle of a piano. Figuring that was a rather broad clue as to Shinya's location, he followed the sound. The music resolved into a brilliant, complicated, rapid classical composition -- it sounded wildly difficult to play, though Shinya knew very little about pianos.

The piano was in the library.

The music was stirring. Emotional. It soared around him when he reached the library door; it made his heart race and his soul sing. Awed, Shinya closed his eyes and just _listened ... _he lost himself in the racing, rushing, soaring music. The composition was unlike anything he'd ever heard before.

He was disappointed when it ended.

He opened his eyes to see Byron sitting up very straight at the piano. His eyes were closed, and his long fingers rested on the keys. His expression was different, somehow -- open, unguarded, calm. And despite his erect stance, Byron looked relaxed.

Shinya realized with a jolt that once Byron lost the guarded, wary, hunted-animal look he was rather good looking. That was almost unexpected; he'd been thinking of Byron as a victim, as someone who needed to be cared for and protected and healed. A child in a man's body -- and, because Byron tended to hunch his shoulders and stare suspiciously at the world, not a very good looking one, either. He hadn't realized that there was a handsome young man lurking behind the veil of fear.

His very appearance changed when he relaxed. It was remarkable.

After a moment Byron started playing the piano again. It was clear that he found the keys by touch; his eyes never opened. This music was softer, subtler, less intense than the last bit. It was magical, haunting music.

When Byron finished, Shinya said quietly, "Beautiful."

Byron snapped the lid down over the keys, visibly tensed, and said with some hostility, "I didn't know I had an audience."

"I couldn't sleep. I'm sorry to ... disturb ... you."

Byron was silent for a long, long moment. "You're not bothering me," he said, finally. "I just haven't played for anyone else in a long time."

"I'll go," Shinya said. "I'm sorry."

"Do you ..." Byron exhaled sharply. He glanced over his shoulder. "Do you _want _to listen?"

"Yeah. Beautiful music."

"Then stay," Byron said, roughly.

There was an overstuffed chair near the piano. Shinya settled into it.

"

Byron gave him an uncertain look, then let his fingers dance across the keys once more. For a little while, he was audibly nervous -- Shinya heard several bad notes and you could sense his tension in his playing. But after a bit, he relaxed, and sat up straight, and lost himself in the music again.

Shinya watched him, intrigued. When Byron wasn't scared, Byron looked completely different. And he hadn't realized until now just how much fear was in the man's soul -- or that there was someone hiding behind the hurt that he'd rather like to get to know.

------------------------


	51. Chapter 51

Kenshin's head hurt and his mouth had a foul, nasty taste in it.

"How late were you out with Darius?" Kaoru demanded, a bit too loudly, when he blearily emerged into the downstairs parlor the following day at noon. "I was worried!"

"Owe!" He flinched. "Kaoru, this one has a headache."

She sniffed. Delicately. Pointedly. Then she asked, "How many glasses of wine did you have?"

He thought back and then answered candidly, "Probably too many. It would have been impolite to refuse. I wasn't _drunk_, Kaoru."

His head was evidence of _too many_. Okay, he _had _been drunk. But not dangerously so -- just socially inebriated. He'd been far more intoxicated plenty of times after spending an evening with Sanosuke and Yahiko. And he'd come home later, too, on a regular basis. He didn't see the problem. He'd _told _Kaoru he was going to be out late.

"Mmhmm."

"Mou! You were not worried about this one, were you?"

"You didn't come home until _dawn_," Kaoru said. "I lay up all night waiting for you to come back. I had _no _sleep. What were you _doing_, Kenshin?"

He winced. He realized she had been worried that he was dead, head lopped off by a strange Immortal. Well, his track record with meeting other Immortals and walking away afterwards wasn't exactly good. He said gingerly, "... we were talking? And playing _Go_."

"Talking. _Go_."

"He's two thousand years old, Kaoru," Kenshin said, in a low, awed voice. "I've never met anyone like him before. He's ... a friend. You needn't worry about me when I'm with Darius. Of that, I am certain."

She didn't look convinced.

"I'll introduce you to him, koishii. It's okay, that it is. You'll see."

"Do that," she said. "I want to meet this holy man."

-----------------

Shinya woke with a start. He was in the library chair. He realized he'd fallen asleep listening to Byron play the piano. Now, judging by the light streaming through the windows it was late morning. He was alone.

There was a quilt tucked around him that hadn't been there, before.

------------------

"Jessica-chan," Chiyoko said, quietly, from the doorway of Jessica's office. "Can I talk to you for a bit?"

"Sure." Jessica set aside the papers she was reading over -- she trusted the managers for her business interests, but she also liked to audit their work. So far, that trust had been upheld. There didn't appear to be any funny business at all among her people.

Chiyoko sat down on the very edge of a chair on the other side of Jessica's desk. "The party you're having -- can you help me?"

"Hmm?"

"I ... I don't want to look like I'm _twelve_ anymore. I'm almost sixteen."

"Oh." Jessica didn't laugh, but it was tempting. It wasn't as if she had any great reputation for looking like a lady. "You're asking _me_?"

"I, umm ..." Chiyoko stared down at her feet. "I want Shinya to see that I _can _look like I'm older."

"Oh, this is about Shinya," Jessica said, with a snicker. "What does Kenshin do, provide his boys with chastity belts when they hit puberty?"

"Hnnh?"

"I practically had to hit Kenji over the head with a board and drag him home by his hair before he kissed me the first time. And he's _still _waiting for the marriage before he makes love to me." Jessica said this in a tone of aggravated complaint.

Chiyoko blushed furiously. Sometimes, Jessica was just far too alarmingly frank. She stammered, "Shinya's not Kenshin's son ..."

"No, but Kenshin has this remarkable ability to influence people for the better." Jessica ran a hand over her face. "Okay, sure, I'll help you look older. I don't know if it'll help, but it should be entertaining to at least watch the boy squirm a bit."

"I just want him to see me as a woman. He treats me like ... well, I've done everything but kiss him _first_ and he won't so much as touch me."

"So why don't you make the first move?" Jessica suggested. "Most men I've known would respond rather well to that."

"... oh." Chiyoko tilted her head, considering. "You think he'd like it if I kissed him?"

"Only one way to find out. It's obvious he cares about you. He may just be shy." Jessica said. She rose. Her paperwork really wasn't nearly as interesting as this project. "So. Makeup and clothes. C'mon, kiddo, let's see what we can do to make you look sexy."

Chiyoko blushed furiously for the second time. "Just older!"

"Nah. You want sexy." Jessica grinned. This was going to be _fun. _

----------------

"No ..." A muffled cry in the night. "No! No!"

Shinya sat bolt upright. When the cries continued, he scrambled out into the hall.

"NO!"

The screaming was coming from Shinya's room.

Kenshin emerged -- from Kaoru's room, Shinya was amused to note. _Good for him_, some abstract part of Shinya's brain noted. Kaoru was close on his heels. Kenshin had his sheathed sakabatou in one hand. "Nooo!" can amagain, from Byron's room.

"I think he's having a loud nightmare," Kenshin said. He visibly relaxed.

"Nooooooo!"

"I'll go wake him up," Shinya said, wincing as more doors opened. Kenji and Chiyoko and Jessica all stuck their heads out. He waved them back to bed. To Kenshin he said, "Eesh. That sounds like a horrible one."

"Aa," Kenshin agreed. Kaoru then snagged him by the arm and towed him back into the room with her. Shinya would have laughed if he wasn't too worried about Byron.

He pushed Byron's door open. "Byron!"

"No!"

"Byron, c'mon, wake up," Shinya walked over to the bed, bent over Byron, and touched him on the shoulder. He realized he was speaking in Japanese, and switched to English. "Byron, wake. Please."

"No!" Byron flung hand at Shinya, connecting with his nose. Shinya recoiled with a muffled oath.

"Who's there?" Byron sounded no less panicked now that he was awake.

Shinya probed his nose cautiously. It wasn't bloodied. "It's Shinya. You were having a bad dream."

"Sh... Shinya?"

"Owe. Yes. Woke whole house."

"I'm s-sorry." Byron rolled over and yanked a pillow over the back of his head. From beneath the pillow he mumbled, "I'm really sorry. Did I hit you?"

Shinya sat down on the edge of the bed and rested a hand on Byron's shoulder. "It's okay."

Silence, from the man, for a long moment. Then he said, "I was dreaming that they were going to arrest _you _the same way they arrested Jake."

"That's not going to happen," Shinya said, soothingly. He rubbed Byron's neck, gently. He would have rubbed his back, but his skin was far from healed.

"You don't know how malicious Basil can be," Byron whispered.

"Want to talk?" Shinya asked, quietly.

If he'd posed that question to Byron in the middle of the day he suspected he would have gotten a very different answer. But Byron was silent for a very long moment before answering, "Yeah."

Shinya reached over and turned up the lamp on the end table beside the bed. "I'll listen." Then he sat crosslegged on the bed, feeling a little awkward -- but sensing Byron _needed _someone.

Byron sat up, tucked both knees to his chest, and, shyly, began to pour out his heart to Shinya.


	52. Chapter 52

Author's Notes More chapters available at my livejournal, ljmouse dot livejournal dot com. Note the "j" in ljmouse. You do not need to have a livejournal account to read or comment. Notably, the whole Chiyoko arc is now finished on the livejournal.

--------

Coal smoke swirled, noxious and thick, across the platform as the train pulled to a halt. Brakes squealed and cars banged and rattled. Steam escaped from the engine with a ferocious whistle.

"Mou! My dress!" Chiyoko complained, not happy with the soot.

Kenshin spared her a glance sideways. She'd gone girly in the last several days. She had on English-style skirts, her hair was carefully pulled up into a bun, and she had used a rather tasteful application of makeup and a hint of perfume. And he suspected she'd stuffed the front of her dress with something to give an illusion of more chest.

Jessica had been involved with Chi-chan's transformation, he was certain of it. And he wasn't entirely sure that he was happy with Chiyoko's new look -- but on the other hand, she was growing up -- emotionally, if not physically. And he remembered how she'd dressed when she'd first joined his family -- she'd been a respectable young lady. This was the English version of respectable young lady.

Shinya, behind her, had his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. He kept shooting Chiyoko nervous looks.

You're being hunted, Shinya-kun, Kenshin thought, with amusement. The only question in his mind was, And do you want to be caught or not?

Byron, next to Shinya, was leaning on his cane and looking remarkably relaxed. Kenshin was unsurprised that Byron and Shinya appeared to be forging a good friendship. Shinya was no warrior, unlike his father -- he had a gentleness and sensitivity in his heart that reminded Kenshin a good bit of Tsubame. Shinya couldn't see someone hurting without wanting to fix it.

What surprised Kenshin was that Byron seemed to have decided he could trust Shinya. That had been faster than Kenshin had expected.

In fact ...

Kenshin watched discretely as Shinya said something to Byron. Whatever it was must have been a compliment, because Byron's face lit up with a huge grin. His eyes were shining brightly. He laughed when Chiyoko said something to low for Kenshin to catch, but his gaze never waved from Shinya's face.

... in fact, it appeared there was just a bit of hero-worship going on there.

Well, just so long as he wasn't the target of said hero worship, Kenshin was happy. Byron could do worse than to pick Shinya as a role model and friend. Shinya would be kind to him; would return his friendship. And in truth the two had a bit in common in temperment; both were sensitive, without any malice in their hearts.

The passengers were disembarking. "Marshall!" Chiyoko suddenly squealed, distracting him from his contemplation of the pair of young men.

Kenshin winced at that happy sound. He still didn't like Marshall, though Chiyoko seemed to have developed quite a fondness for him. Well, he figured she was more than able to take care of herself and Marshall might be a learning experience for her. He could tell her why he didn't like the guy or he could let her find out for herself. Figuring it out for herself might be initially more painful, but it would be a lesson she wouldn't forget.

Given the fact that there were people who would cheerfully take her head without a second thought out there, he rather thought she needed a few lessons in being selective in the friends one chose.

Anyway, he seriously doubted that Marshall would do anything to actually hurt Chiyoko.

"Uncle!" Jessica chimed in.

The two women ran forward and hugged the older man as he stepped off the train. He spun Jessica around, then did the same with Chiyoko.

The rest shook hands with him -- Kenshin noted he tried to hug Kaoru and she firmly stuck her hand out to shake instead. Well, she knew the root of his dislike of the man.

"Shinta," Marshall said, gravely, offering his hand to Kenshin.

"Hello," Kenshin said, in English. "It's been awhile."

------------------

Jessica's idea of a party meant dancing and music from a band. People started arriving just after the dinner hour. There were many of them in very fine clothes. Chiyoko was fascinated by the people -- wealthy, rich, famous. Jessica was apparently known for good parties, with a slightly scandalous bent to them.

"You're looking all grown up!" Marshall said, joining Chiyoko. She was watching the people swirl across the floor in the steps of a waltz. His voice was approving, and he was grinning. He had two glasses of wine in his hands and he offered her one. "I've missed riding with you, Chi-chan. Perhaps tomorrow we can take some horses out for a hack."

"Sure!" she said, happily. She sipped at the wine. "I like that big black gelding that Jessica has. I've ridden him a few times with her trainer."

"You must look very pretty on him," Marshall said.

She giggled. "I don't know about that."

"Don't sell yourself short, kiddo. You have a certain exotic quality. You're beautiful."

"You flatter!" She protested, but she laughed. Marshall was flirting with her. She didn't know if she should be scandalized or not. She sipped her wine.

-------------------

Chiyoko was enjoying herself. The party that was loud and raucous. Jessica had invited a crowd of people, most of whom Chiyoko didn't know -- but the young men had been spinning her out onto the dance floor for hours.

Cynically, she thought that her popularity as a dance partner might have something to do with the fact that there were more men than women. Jessica had invited a few dozen business associates and their kin. Jessica's mother had been scandalized by the party and had retired early to her rooms with a grumble about noise from the hired band and how terribly Jessica had been brought up by her father.

Marshall had spun her out onto the floor several times. He was good at dancing, she thought, though she didn't have all that much experience; graceful and strong.

It was fun, and the exercise was enough to wind even someone as fit as she was.

She stood by the side of the room, sipping a glass of wine -- her fourth of the evening, but, she told herself, it had been a long evening -- and took a chance to catch her breath.

"May I have dance?" Shinya said, appearing at her elbow. He plucked the glass of wine out of her hand and set it down on a table. She was delighted by the invitation. While she'd danced with everyone else, this was the man she'd wanted most to ask her. Finally, he had. She wasn't sure why he'd been waiting -- shy nerves, perhaps.

Grinning, she held her arm out and he swept her out onto the floor for a waltz.

"You look like you're enjoying yourself," he murmured close to her ear, bending over a bit to do so. "I think the men are liking you."

"There's only one man in here I really want," she giggled.

"You've had too much to drink," Shinya scolded her. He went suddenly serious. She could sense the change in him.

"It's a party!" She pressed herself closer to him, enjoying the feel of his body against hers. She was so glad he'd asked her. Maybe someday, she'd get to feel a lot more of him ...

But to her dismay, he stiffened, and pulled a bit away.

"Chi-chan, no," he murmured, close to her ear.

The music stopped, the song over. "Mou." She pouted at him. What was his problem, anyway?

"You've had way too much to drink." He caught her elbow in his hand, "Come on, outside for a bit. Let's get you some air."

He led her outside to the torchlit patio outside the ballroom, through the crowd, and to a bench away from everyone. This made her very hopeful. Privacy was a good thing. Maybe he'd gotten jealous, watching her with the other men and planned to -- finally -- make his feelings really known to her. But his words, when he spoke, were only teasing. "Chi-chan, you have the tolerance for wine of a child!"

"I'm NOT a child!" She huffed at him, stung a bit.

He regarded her thoughtfully. "No. You're not. I'm sorry to pick on you for that." He cupped his hand behind his head in a way that reminded Chiyoko of both Kenshin and Yahiko -- they both did that when they were disconcerted. "I guess I've had a few glasses too. I was just worried about you. The men are talking about you. They think you might be ... easy ... because of the way you're dancing."

"I've never even been with a guy, you know that! You're the only boy I've ever even kissed!" She protested, then blushed. He was right. She'd probably had too much to drink. Marshall had pushed a glass of wine into her hand on two separate occasions. She'd drank the other two glasses because she was thirsty from the exercise.

He tweaked her nose with his finger. "Just looking out for you, Chi-chan."

"You don't think I'm ... behaving badly ... do you?" She was suddenly embarrassed. She'd been having fun, but if it made Shinya think ill of her ...

"Oh, no!" He hastily assured her. "I know you're not like that. They're stupid. They don't know you like I know you."

"You like me, don't you?"

"Of course I do," he said. His answer relieved her. There'd been a bit of doubt in her head, occasionally.

"Good." And she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

He went rigid under her hands and shoved her away so hard that she slid backwards on the bench. "Chiyoko!" He sounded shocked.

Oh.

Jessica had said he'd like it, if she kissed him. Chiyoko swallowed hard, seeing that he didn't. He was looking at her with alarmed brown eyes, nostrils flared, mouth hanging open. He reached up and touched his lips with his fingers and then said, flatly, "You're too drunk."

"You ... you don't want me to kiss you."

His eyes softened. They were alone; the nearest partiers were well out of earshot. The bench was partially obscured in shadow. It felt romantic, to her. Maybe ... maybe he'd come back to her. She so wanted him to return her kiss. He had, once, a long time ago.

"No, Chi-chan, I don't."

"But ..."

He sounded miserable when he said, "I am your friend, Chiyoko. But I don't ... I don't want to marry you. I don't want to be your lover. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've tried to convince myself I do, but I don't. I'm just not ... you're just not what I want ... and it's nothing against you, it's just ..."

Oh, God. He thought she was a little girl.

Chiyoko scrambled to her feet. "Don't say any more. Don't! I don't want to hear it! I can't change who I am! I can't! And it's not fair! I hate it! I hate it! I know I'll never be the woman you want, but damnit, Shinya, couldn't you at least give me a chance to try!"

"It's not ..." He was going to say something like, It's not possible. She didn't give him a chance. Furious, she spun and ran back inside.

--------------

Roughly two seconds after a rather drunk Chiyoko had bolted on him, Kenji was suddenly there. He must have practically run across the patio. He grabbed Shinya by the arm and yanked him off the bench. "What did you just say to her?"

"I ..." Shinya tried to pull free. He wanted to rush after her. "I told her I didn't want ..."

"Damnit." Kenji growled at him. "I told you not to break her heart. I saw her try to kiss you. Smooth, Shinya. Real smooth. You could have had a little more tact. You could have told her how you felt a long time ago. Idiot!"

"Let go of me!"

"Leave her alone," Kenji growled lower. "Let her sober up. Talk to her later. You try to follow her now you'll either end up in a huge fight or you'll end up sleeping with her out of guilt. Let her cool off and then talk to her, Shinya."

He paused, muttered, "Baka!" and then shoved Shinya off in the general direction of the gardens. "Get out of my sight before I turn you over my knee. Coward."

"Coward?" Shinya said, stung. He turned back to face Kenji, who glared at him with real anger.

"Coward for not telling her your feelings before now. You let her get her hopes high because you were too scared she'd hate you if you told her 'no'. Get out of my sight!"

----------------

Byron saw Chiyoko go streaking past him, sobbing. He started to turn to pursue her, but then a disturbance outside caught his attention.

"... Get out of my sight!" Kenji snarled at Shinya. His brother turned sharply on his heel and then stalked off back into the house.

Shinya's expression was absolutely stricken. He looked a heartbeat from tears -- Byron was relieved when the young man turned about in the other direction, vaulted the low stone wall around the patio, and disappeared into the garden.

If you were going to cry, Byron knew from harsh personal experience, in the middle of a party was probably not the best place to do it.

What had happened to upset the two of them so thoroughly?

Worried, he went after Shinya. Chiyoko, likely, would soon have a pack of women tending to her tears. But nobody ever worried about how the guy felt after a blow up like that. And by Shinya's expression, he was very much upset.

----------------

He'd screwed up. Shinya sat in the dark, back to the cherry tree, contemplating just how bad he'd screwed up. He was concluding, Spectacularly..

Shinya had realized that about one second after Chiyoko had jumped to entirely the wrong conclusion.

Kenji was right. He'd hurt her. Unnecessarily.

This whole thing with her dressing like a woman, dressing sexy -- she was trying to get my attention. She's been desperate for me to be more than just her best friend.

He should have told her he wasn't interested. And why.

The truth was, he did find her attractive -- it was her intelligence and an indefinable spark to her that he liked. But he wasn't attracted to her.

"Shinya?" a voice said, hesitantly.

"Byron." He didn't want company. He wanted to be alone. He wasn't fit for polite conversation, that was for certain. "I'm okay. Go back to the party."

Instead, Byron awkwardly lowered himself to the ground a foot away. "What happened?"

"I just .. hurt ... Chiyoko," he said, savagely. "It's my fault."

"Chiyoko loves you," Byron said, quietly. "What happened?"

"I do not love her." Shinya tucked his knees to his chest, wrapped his arms around his legs, and glanced sideways at Byron. There was a bit of a moon and he could make out the sharp planes of the thin man's face and the bob of his adam's apple when he swallowed. "Not never loved her. I want to love her. She's ... she's my friend. She's pretty. We get married, people happy. She really happy."

He ran a hand over his face. "Lots of people say, don't marry for love. Marry for ... who fit with you. We fit. Might be happy together. But ... I do not love her. I do not ... desire her."

Again, he glanced sideways at Byron. "I don't think I would ever desire her. I look at Kenji and Jessica, or Kaoru and Kenshin. I want that ... I want to fall in love like that. Maybe I'm selfish."

"I don't think that's selfish," Byron said quietly. He rested his elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand. "I wish I liked girls. Then I might have a chance at something like that."

Shinya snorted a laugh, low and blackly amused. "You know, I get that better than you'd think."

Silence, from Byron. Byron was no longer resting his chin on his hand. He was staring at Shinya in something that looked very much like alarm.

Shinya smiled ruefully. "My people ... don't quite make the distinctions English do. Oh, the government says men and men are wrong. But the people?" He shrugged again. "I've always liked good looking guys. Hell, you should have seen the view in the dojo when the older students were in there -- the men. You might have drooled all over yourself. I'll confess to enjoying it myself."

More silence, from Byron. He looked shocked and, in truth, appalled by this revelation. Shinya wondered what was going through Byron's head; he was a little concerned that the man might think less of him now. He'd been told all his life that being attracted to other men was wrong.

Shinya sighed. He continued carefully, "I don't think, with Chiyoko, it's just that she's a girl. I liked looking at girls. It's just that ... well, she's not what I want, you know?"

"You like men." Byron sounded disbelieving.

"Sometimes, if it the right man." Shinya regarded Byron thoughtfully. The truth was, now that Byron had stopped flinching away from him, had stopped being frightened of him. After that night with the nightmare, Byron seemed to accept he wasn't an enemy and he might just be a friend. And Shinya had started to see the man behind the fear -- and it seemed to be someone he rather liked.

And he'd just royally screwed things up with Chiyoko by not being honest with her. Lesson learned, there.

Byron was ... well, Shinya found him intriguing. He really and truly wanted to get to know him. And he was done with hiding his feelings for the benefit of others.

Shyly, he said, "You good looking man."

Byron recoiled from him, sliding backwards across the grass, putting a good two more feet between them.

Damn. He'd been right about the man believing that men being attracted to men was wrong. Even if he, himself, was just such a man. Which meant he certainly believed that he was wrong -- bad, diseased, evil, whatever the hell they'd been telling him. He wanted to go punch out a few Englishmen, and then slug Byron for good measure for believing them.

Shinya growled in frustration. "Stop it. Forget I said anything. This night -- bad night."

He rolled to his feet. He'd apparently just made a disaster of two relationships in under an hour. Three, if he counted Kenji, who likely was already telling Kenshin and Kaoru what had happened with Chiyoko. With bitter anger that was aimed mostly at himself he snapped, "I ... fuck ... everything up. I go to bed. Maybe I not wake up in the morning and everybody happy."

Shinya was several strides towards the house when Byron caught up to him. Byron grabbed him by the arm, yanked him to a halt. "Shinya, wait!"

He spun around.

"Shinya, you ... you can't think that way." Byron rested his hands on Shinya's shoulders. "Shinya, your friends love you. They'll forgive you."

"I fucked up. I not say things to Chiyoko I should. I say things to you -- I shouldn't. I'm an idiot." Shinya tried to shrug free, but Byron had a good grip on his arms. "Let go of me."

"Shinya, I ... thank you."

"Hnnh?" Not exactly the comment he'd been expecting to hear.

"Thank you for ... being honest. I ... I like you, too." Byron's voice was barely audible. "I never .. I never would have known, if you hadn't said ..." He trailed off. "Do you really think I'm handsome?"

Shinya hesitated, torn and uncertain. Byron was asking for a lot more than just an opinion on his looks. Did he want something to happen with Byron? He knew that the decisions he made here affected not just him, but Byron too. And Byron was a lot less likely to be okay after heartbreak than Chiyoko was.

Chi-chan probably hated him, Shinya reflected, but the worst she would do would be to go cry herself to sleep in her room. She'd be okay eventually. He wasn't worried about her, except that he'd just probably lost a close friend. And he was upset with himself for breaking her heart. Kenji was right. He could have handled it a lot better.

Byron was ... different. He was so much more vulnerable. He'd been hurt so many times in his life. Shinya knew that he could destroy this man. And, demonstrably, he was not good with matters of the heart.

Byron sighed, closed his eyes, and let go of Shinya's arms. "Don't answer that. I don't want to hear it."

Shinya pictured a life without Byron in it. He barely knew the guy, yet it was an utterly empty feeling. A life without Chiyoko made him feel sad -- and also annoyed, because, largely, that would be her choice if she chose not to be his friend anymore. If she'd forgive him, he'd be happy to continue being her friend.

A life without Byron, on the other hand ... he blinked, wondering why he felt so bereft when he contemplated that. It made absolutely no sense.

How had that happened? Shinya wondered. It made no logical sense. Why Byron? He barely even spoke English, he hardly knew him, and he didn't exactly seem like promising lover material. Not that Shinya knew all that much about lovers.

Except ... well, Byron looked at him like he was a hero. That had started after the nightmare. And Shinya could lose himself in Byron's music for hours ... Byron wasn't willing to play for anyone else; Shinya had suggested he show his skills at the piano off to the others and he'd refused. And he smiled, when Shinya looked at him, in a way that he did for nobody else.

And all Shinya had to do to make Byron grin from ear to ear for hours was to pay him a slight compliment of any sort, even on a completely trivial subject.

He'd never, ever been the center of that sort of attention before. It felt ... good.

His instincts said, Yes to Byron. And he was grateful that the moonlight likely hid his blushing when he thought of being a lover to this man. It wasn't an unpleasant thought. However, he also guessed that meant he'd need to take the lead, because Byron -- though he doubtless had more actual experience than Shinya -- wasn't going to be the one to make the first move. That much, at least, Shinya had figured out.

Shinya said hesitantly, "Byron?"

The tall man hugged himself and responded miserably, "What?"

"Et-to ..." He said, nervously. ""Et-to ... I do ... I do like you."

This got him one of those grins that he'd just been thinking about. Lord Byron's teeth were very white in the moonlight. Byron took a slightly unstable step towards him again, then two. The taller man's arms folded around him. In the dark, they clung to each other, offering wordless mutual comfort for several minutes.

Finally, Byron stepped back. He wobbled as he did so; Shinya realized that he'd left his cane on the ground behind them in his hurry to catch up. "This isn't a good place," he said, wary again. "We could be seen."

Shinya nodded understanding. He blew out an annoyed puff of breath, then said, "Go up your room. I be there, later. I -- I want to talk to you."

Byron said, "Talk is good."

"Just talk," Shinya cautioned. He wasn't ready for anything else.

"Good." Byron said. "That was all I had in mind too."

Shinya laughed with a bit of relief. "Good."

"Good!" Byron chuckled, suddenly, then said in a very low voice, "Listen to us. Aren't we a pair of total girls? Let's not do anything but talk ..!"

Shinya snorted. "I think you'd not like me as much if I had breasts." He cupped his hands in front of his chest, gesturing to indicate a bosom.

Bryon's gave him a startled look before chuckling -- if a bit uncertainly, this time. Shinya clapped him on the arm. "Go on. I meet you up there."


	53. Chapter 53

Author's notes Marshall really is an ass. I want to scrub my brain out with bleach every time I write a scene with him in it.

--------------

He didn't find her attractive.

That thought kept spinning over and over through Chiyoko's head. She lay curled up under her blanket, lamp blown out, room silent except for the sound of the party and the band. Both were still in full swing, and, she guessed, would continue until at least dawn.

Jessica knew how to throw a wild party, that was for sure.

Mrs. Marshall had been so very scandalized. Chiyoko, raised in a good family herself, wasn't sure she completely approved either -- on the other hand, dancing with all the men had been fun.

But now she wondered, did they see her as a woman, or as a young teen?

_Father_, she thought, meaning her real father, who'd wanted so badly for her to have a respectable marriage with his business partner's son. _Father, would you be embarrassed to see me now? Fighting like a boy, dancing with strange men, being rude and raucous like a tramp? You'd be horrified, I think! _

A knock, at her door.

Irritated, she snapped, "I said, go away!"

Kenji had been by first, hours earlier. Then Kenshin. Then Jessica. Kaoru had tried to talk to her three times. They all wanted to offer her comfort.

The ugly truth was, there wasn't a damn thing any of them could do. Nobody could change the fact that she was stuck in the body of a fourteen year old girl for the rest of her life -- a girl who looked even younger than her years. She might be a few months from turning sixteen, a few months from when she would have been married to a good boy in that lost past life -- but when she stood before a mirror, she still looked like a little girl.

No amount of makeup and padding and fine clothes would ever change any of that.

Shinya had seen right through her to the little girl she would always be. He was _not attracted to her_. He clowned around with her, and talked to her, and was her best friend, perhaps _because _he didn't see her as a potential wife.

The bastard could have said something earlier, however.

The humiliation was extreme. She'd tried to kiss him. And he'd reacted with disgust, as if a little girl had come on to him.

All her dreams ... of marriage, of adopted children, of a happy like ... they wouldn't happen with Shinya. Likely, they wouldn't happen with anyone. As if she could raise children anyway -- how could someone who looked like a girl herself be a _mother_?

A knock, again.

"I said, go away!" She snarled, not caring how rude she sounded.

"Kiddo?"

It was Marshall. Gods. The _last _person she wanted to talk to.

He pushed her door open. "Can I come in?"

"Get out!"

Despite the fact that _Get out! _was hardly an invitation to enter, he slipped through the doorway and pushed the door shut with his foot. She saw he had one of the bottles of wine from downstairs in his hand, and two glasses in the other. Then they were in the dark together. She heard him cross the pitch black room and then the bed dipped as he sat down on the edge of it.

"What ... what do you want?"

"What happened?" He asked, quietly. "I saw you run past all upset, and now your family's in an uproar downstairs and they keep saying rude things about Shinya."

"Bastard," she muttered.

"Did he ... did he make an unwelcome advance on you?" Marshall hazarded a guess that was wildly wrong.

Chiyoko barked a short laugh. "No. I kissed him and he shoved me away. Marshall, I'm _always _going to look like a little girl. He's not attracted to me. I thought he was -- he kissed me once, and he held me, and uh, he felt interested. I could feel it."

She was blushing; she was glad for the darkness of her room.

Marshall said quietly, "He's a fool if he turned you away, Chiyoko."

"No man will _ever_ want me!"

"That's not true!"

He shifted on the edge of the bed. A match flared; he lifted the glass up on the lamp beside her bed and lit it. "You're a beautiful young woman, Chiyoko, and Shinya is an utter fool if he can't see that."

He stood up, set both glasses down on the table beside the lamp, and poured them both full of wine.

"I think I've had enough wine." A couple of hours alone in the dark had rendered her head slightly less fuzzy. She likely wouldn't have had the nerve to kiss Shinya if she hadn't been drunk. However, at least she _knew _how he felt now.

He snorted. "In the state you're in? You haven't had enough."

Uncertainly, she accepted the glass from him and sipped it.

He upended his, downing a rather large glass of ruby red wine in several gulps. Encouraged, she followed suit. In truth, getting completely drunk did hold an appeal -- maybe she'd pass out until morning, wake up, and find this was all a bad dream.

He sighed and poured two more glasses for both of them. "Drink it slower," he cautioned, "You're a little thing; I don't want you falling asleep on me."

"Passing out," she said, enunciating every word clearly, "Might let me forget the awful realization that I will _never _be women men find attractive. And I know you say I am, but I think you're simply being kind."

She drank half of the second glass of wine in one long swallow -- she'd have downed all of it, having decided _drunk _was a very good state to be in, but he plucked it out of her fingers.

"Hey!"

"Chiyoko, I was going to wait until you were a bit older," he said, after completely downing his cup, "but I think perhaps tonight ..." he sighed, "... I'm a dirty old man. You realize that, right?"

The alcohol was hitting her brain in a hurry; it had been several hours since dinner. She nodded. "You're almost a century old. You like pretty girls."

"You are funny when you're drunk," he said, though she wasn't sure what he'd said that he found humorous. Well, he'd been drinking too -- she could smell it on him, and knew he'd had far more than two glasses tonight.

"I think you're a very pretty girl," he reached a hand out and traced a tear-track on her cheek.

"Could you ... could you love someone like me?" She said, sounding timid even to her own ears.

"I think I could." He reached out and pulled her into his lap. His mouth descended on hers, hard and hot and hungry. Startled, she simply lay there, letting him kiss her. After a moment, he whispered, "C'mon, Chiyoko. Kiss me back. I think I could fall in love with a pretty girl like you very easily."

So she kissed him back. For a minute.

Then, with apparent regret, he started to pull away. "I've got to go, Chiyoko, or I won't be able to stop myself. You're so beautiful."

"Don't ..." she took a deep breath. She was scared. But ... but at least _somebody_ thought she was pretty. "Stay. Please. Stay with me tonight."

And it wasn't what she'd dreamed of _at all _for her first time -- she'd wanted her first time to be in the arms of a man she loved and had just married -- but he said she was pretty and that he could love her. So she let him kiss her. And when he pressed her back to the mattress, she learned that a man who'd been married five times and had lived almost a century knew a thing or two about making love.

It hurt, a bit. But he also made her feel things she'd never felt or even dreamed of, before. He kissed her and he held her and he touched her and he was very gentle and kind.

But in the end, she didn't mind. Because she was very sure, after that, that he _did _find her beautiful. After all, he told her so very many times that night.

--------------

Shinya was utterly exhausted. But he was also completely confident that he'd made the right decision.

He'd talked to Byron about _everything _over the course of the past night -- they'd ended up both sitting cross legged on the bed, splitting a bottle of wine between them over the several hours until dawn. The alcohol had lowered Byron's inhibitions -- and, Shinya thought, the man was rapidly growing more comfortable with the idea that Shinya might actually like him. Which was great, Shinya concluded, because Shinya was a lot more comfortable with the idea that Shinya liked Byron as well.

It turned out they had so very much in common. They had the same love of books -- they'd even both read H. G. Wells until they'd memorized the stories, each in their respective languages. Byron's love of music mirrored Shinya's honest appreciation for it, though Shinya had never had the ear to play an instrument himself. To Shinya's surprise he also discovered they had sense of humor that was very much alike, including a similar appreciation for really dirty jokes.

A language barrier was no barrier at _all _for dirty jokes, if you were more than a little drunk and you were willing to substitute gestures and pantomime for the words you didn't know. Much hilarity resulted, in fact, from Byron's attempts to figure out exactly what word Shinya was indicating.

This had degenerated into Byron listing every synonym he could think of for male and female body parts. Shinya could now say "breast" and "penis" at _least _a hundred different ways in English. And then that had led to an amusing discussion of insults related to said body parts; Shinya was astonished at the number of ways one could insult someone in English by using words and phrases related to genitals.

He found 'dickhead' particularly amusing. He wasn't sure if the mental image should be a penis with a face on it, or someone who _really _needed to wear a hat at all times, because they had an unexpected body part lurking in their hair. When he'd asked Byron for his opinion on the matter, Byron had promptly grabbed a pen and a piece of paper from the table and quickly sketched some rather improper drawings of each possibility.

Which was how Shinya discovered that Byron could draw just as well as he could play the piano. The _face _that Byron put on the caricatures was that of his cousin Basil.

They never did decide which was the preferable mental image to go with that insult. But they had a great deal of drunken fun discussing it.

"It's dawn," Byron said, regretfully, as a rooster crowed outside. "You should be going, before the servants find you in here."

Shinya sighed, reluctantly. He rose from the bed, only a little unsteady from drink. It had been a good bottle of wine, and they'd made it last. "I had fun, Byron."

What he really wanted to do was _kiss _Byron ... but he wasn't sure how Byron would react, and he was just getting the man to really trust him. He wasn't about to risk losing that trust and friendship. Byron's smiles and laughter was more important to him than his satisfying his lust.

And he had a good idea that he might get it all, eventually -- trust, friendship, love, and _lust_ -- if he gave Byron enough time to heal. He could wait.

"So did I," Byron said, grinning. "You're a lot of fun, Shinya. I -- I've missed having a friend."

"Well, you've got one now," Shinya assured him, with a laugh.

He let himself out -- just in time to see Chiyoko's door open and _Marshall _step out.

Shinya stared in disbelief.

Marshall was very drunk, far drunker than he was. The man had on only his shirt and undergarments. There was a smear of blood on his hand.

"Marshall," Shinya said, very low, anger suddenly boiling to the surface. "What ..."

Marshall spun about. Staggered sideways in a drunken haze. And passed out.

The term 'dickhead' came to mind, and viler insults. Shinya walked up to him, nudged him with a toe. "You, bastard, what _did you do_?"

No response.

Shinya kicked him in the ribs.

Marshall puked in the general vicinity of Shinya's bare feet, without rousing much -- he was coherent enough to avoid inhaling it, but only barely. Shinya stepped back in disgust.

Then he spun about and shoved his way into Chiyoko's room.

She was sprawled on the bed under a sheet, which also had blood on it -- not a lot, but enough to tell him what had happened here. And other substances. She was also _awake_, and staring at him in horror. Apparently, she wasn't quite as drunk as Marshall.

"Chi-chan!"

"Get. Out!" She reached for an empty bottle of wine at his head and flung it at him hard, with intent.

She'd definitely imbibed her share. The bottle of wine missed by several feet. Had she been sober, she could have killed him.

"Chiyoko, I'm sorry!" He was horrified. If he'd known _this _would happen ... hell, better _him _than Marshall! He should have kissed her back. He should have let her down gently, later.

Gods, he would have _married _her rather than allow this to happen. She was his best friend. Marshall ... well, Marshall was scum. The man was almost a century old. Chiyoko was just a _girl_.

"Did he ... did he force you?" He whispered, through a throat gone dry and thick with horror.

"Get. Out!" A wine glass followed the wine bottle.

"Gods. I'm getting Kenshin." He could only think that Marshall had snuck in during the night and forced her, perhaps while she was too drunk to resist. Had she taken a bottle of wine to bed with her? She'd certainly been upset enough to seek oblivion in booze, though he'd never seen her do that before.

He'd also never seen her quite as upset as she had been last night, before.

She froze. Panic lit in her eyes. "No! No, please! Shinya, _no_!"

Her pleas stopped him cold. She clutched the stained sheet to her chest and stammered, "I asked him to stay. Shinya, I asked him to stay. He was going to leave and I asked him to stay. _Please _don't tell Kenshin. He'll be mad at Marshall and it's not Marshall's fault. He was drunk and I asked him to stay!"

"Chi-chan, I'm so sorry. I should have ... I know you liked me, I should have handled things better last night. I'm so sorry I hurt you."

"Yeah. You were an idiot." She was pissed as hell at him still; he could hear it. "I know you think I'm just a little girl. But Marshall doesn't. He says I'm pretty. _He _likes me. Please don't tell Kenshin about this; he'll hurt Marshall and he'll probably be mad at me and ... and I was drunk and it wasn't Marshall's fault. I begged him to stay!"

Shinya sighed. "Okay, Chi-chan. But I swear, if he doesn't treat you right, I'll kill him myself."

She grinned, suddenly, through her tears. "Thank you, Shinya. I owe you."

"No ... no, I think we're even." He had a very bad feeling about this turn of events. And if _only _he'd been more tactful, this might not have happened. It was his fault, really.

He closed his eyes, and said, "When you're sober, we need to talk. I think you misunderstood a few things. Hells, I think _I _misunderstood a few things about me until tonight. Okay, Chi-chan?"

Uncertainly, and with a slur in her voice, she said, "Okay."

He observed darkly. "And you are going to have one _hell _of a hangover when you wake up, too. Just saying." He cupped his hand behind his head and regarded her. Hostile brown eyes glared back. He added, "I think the whole _house _is going to have a hangover in a few hours."

Outside, in the hall, Marshall was gone. His vomit was still there, an odorous pool. Carefully, Shinya stepped over it and made his way back to his own room, where he collapsed face-first into the pillows. Just before exhaustion claimed him, his last coherent thought was that things probably would have gone a lot better, overall, if he'd never gotten out of bed the previous morning.


	54. Chapter 54

Author's Notes Darius is a Franciscan monk in the series, but that is ninety years in the future. He has always been portrayed as a holy man more than adhering to any one doctrine. More spiritual than religious. I made him Anglican because it works better from the standpoint of the Trevors being a _lot _more likely to be Anglican than Catholic. (The Marshalls are also Anglican.)

At some point, to keep his cover, he would certainly have to reinvent himself. Actually, he's probably done this more than once.

Be interesting to see the reaction from the religious leaders of either denomination if they found out that they had a man who was older than Christ in their ranks ... snicker

-----------------

"Chiyoko! Get up!"

Kenshin's voice split through Chiyoko's skull with roughly the force of a dull axe. Apparently, Immortality was not proof against a hangover. She opened her eyes, stared up at the ceiling.

"Chiyoko, you have five minutes to be dressed and out on the lawn for practice."

He knew she was awake. Bastard could probably tell simply by a change in her _ki_.

She sat up, kicking aside the sheets. Her head spun and the pounding behind her eyes intensified to a ferocious level. She could barely see. Her mouth tasted like she'd been vomiting, though she didn't remember puking. She was reasonably sure that she was still drunk.

She did remember lots of other things, and the pain, lower, confirmed her somewhat drink-hazed memories.

_Shit_.

She sat on the bed, knees tucked to her chest, numbly staring at the wall. She'd never noticed the wallpaper before -- little roses and ivy leaves, making green vertical stripes on the walls. She thought it was a remarkably ugly design, too. It matched her mood.

"Chi-chan, are you well?" Kenshin sounded concerned now.

She glanced at the sheets, which were well stained with blood. Hopefully, the servants would assume it was _that _time. Kenshin wouldn't be fooled -- furiously embarrassed, but hurting too much to want to continue a training session, she'd complained of cramps a week ago and he'd made her train _anyway_. His precise words were, "Other Immortals aren't going to go away out of pity because you're having your female time. You can move, you can train."

And then he'd made her go jogging with him for hours -- all the way into town and back.

"I'll be out in a minute. I'm not decent!" She couldn't let him see the sheets. He'd _know_. Her face flushed with furious embarrassment. He'd know, and he'd think less of her. He'd think her _easy_. She wasn't! She was a _lady_.

"Five minutes. Grass. Out back."

He sounded ... almost amused, now. She had no idea what was going through his head, though judging by that tone of voice, he was not aware that ... Marshall ... had been here. Probably.

She had _no _idea.

She dressed quickly, yanking on an old pair of hakama and a much-mended top.

_Marshall_. She remembered Marshall.

He'd said ... he'd said she was pretty. She'd been devastated about Shinya. Shinya thought her a little girl. And he'd proved she wasn't.

_Oh, Gods, what am I going to do? _

Kenshin made no secret of his dislike for Marshall. She wasn't entirely sure why Kenshin had such a distaste for the man, but he did. He would _not _approve of Marshall.

Chiyoko closed her eyes, briefly, picturing Marshall's grin. He wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind for the love of her life, but he _liked _her. And she recognized that, given the body she was stuck with for the rest of her life, finding men who would see her as a _woman_ was going to be difficult. Demonstratably, Marshall thought she was attractive. Sexy, even. He'd _said _so, and given the circumstances, she didn't think he was lying.

With a bit of a smirk, she remembered _how _many times he'd said he found her beautiful. It had to be true.

_And he's Immortal, like me. He'll understand about the Game. He can watch my back. He's wealthy, too. _

She had once been betrothed in an arranged marriage to the son of a business associate. This had seemed to be a perfectly logical marriage to her; she had been a willing participant in the planned marriage that was intended to seal business alliances and make them _family _alliances ... and likewise, she could come up with several very good, logical reasons to contemplate a long term relationship with Marshall. Maybe even marriage. _Preferably _marriage. Add to that the fact that ... well, he _liked _her. He'd said so. That was a bonus.

Really, she told herself, Marshall made more sense than Shinya as a husband. Though her heart would have preferred ...

Resolutely, she told herself Shinya was an absolute idiot. She'd been very mistaken about his intentions. She would not make that error again about a man.

But Kenshin would be pissed if he found out about Marshall. He would be beyond pissed. He would disapprove. He didn't _like _Marshall, for reasons she couldn't comprehend.

She didn't want to lose his approval. It would hurt too much.

_So he can't find out about this. At least, not for now. _

Resolutely, she headed for the door. Gods, her head hurt.

-----------------

Kenshin was standing in what had to be the brightest patch of sunlight in the whole yard. Chiyoko _really _would have preferred someplace in the shade. The sun glared directly on her headache via the backs of her eyes.

He was holding a large metal trash can and a piece of metal pipe.

She eyed the pipe. She eyed the trash can.

Her suspicions were proven well founded when he tossed her the pipe. Then he had her jump airborne and hit the trash can with the pipe when he threw it at her. It made a very loud noise.

On the whole, she wasn't sure which was worse: the noise or the jumping.

Kenshin gave her an very guileless look. Her expression must have given her discomfort -- discomfort was a _mild _word for what she was feeling -- away. "Oro! Are you okay, Chi-chan?"

"_Fine_," she growled. "What am I supposed to be learning here?"

"Balance," he said. He smiled. Innocently.

After several rounds of beat-the-trash-can, he took her for a run. This wasn't his usual jogging routine, where they ran several miles over rolling hills. No. They ran flat out, at top speed, over the roughest country he could find. They jumped over rocks in creeks, crashed through bushes, bolted at top speed along the top of a stone wall, and hurdled fences and hedges.

Just when she thought she couldn't bear any more, he upped the ante -- he'd been carrying his sword the whole time. Now, still running, he drew it. And they engaged in a running, acrobatic sparring match that covered several _more _miles.

She was out of breath and about to vomit when he abruptly stopped. Stood. Faced her.

"You _do _realize I have a hangover?"

She assumed he did. He'd been remarkably ... charming ... in behavior. Smiling. Cheerful. _Way _too cheerful. This was Kenshin in full-on ruruoni mode.

"You look it. You also fight well with a hangover." He scratched his head behind his ear. "As long as you're living with me, you drink enough to get a hangover? You get a training session in the morning you won't forget. I'm not training you in Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu to have you get killed because you got shit-faced somewhere and some random Immortal took advantage of the fact." He sheathed his sakabatou at the waist and flicked his long coat over it to hide it.

His face grew still. The smile faded. "Chi-chan, when I was your age, I'd killed men for far less reason than you had. I'd had people trying to kill _me _for what I was for a few years, too. And a few months younger than you now, I married a woman who then died at my hand by accident."

She blinked at him. "Kenshin-papa?"

"You're not a little girl, Chi-chan." He started walking -- quickly, she recognized he was walking towards town and not towards the house. "Oh -- I'd love to shelter you for a few years yet. I'd love to be able to tell you the world is a nice place and let you play with dollies and promise you everything works out in the end and that your prince will come, sweep you off your feet, and marry you and you'll live happily ever after."

He shook his head. His expression was grim, now. "The world's not always a nice place, Chiyoko. Both of us know that."

She wondered if he knew about Marshall. She wouldn't put it past him. Though she thought he'd have said something more direct if he did know about last night; Kenshin was pretty good about coming right to the point if he had anything to say. You weren't left wondering about his opinion on your behavior for very long.

She honestly wasn't sure if this relieved her, or not.

_Gods. I still can't believe ... he said he loved me! _

She honestly wasn't sure what to think of that. It felt good to be loved, to be the center of someone's attention as she had been last night. Yet ... yet, when she thought of Marshall, there was a sudden upswelling of nervous anxiety in her heart.

_Nobody will approve of us. _

And with Kenshin in the house, she'd have to be so _careful_. Kenshin could be damn near psychic even without any special Immortal powers. And he could sense both her and Marshall at a distance, which meant -- if he hadn't picked up on anything last night -- they'd have to be careful about _where _Kenshin was if they got together secretly. He'd certainly suspect something if he woke up after midnight and felt both of their _ki _coming from her bedroom.

Kenshin had his arms folded, hands tucked into the sleeves of his gi. After a moment, he added, "If you were a mortal girl, I'd coddle you more. But you're not. You are what fate made you. To protect you, to shelter you, would be to do you a disservice. You've had to grow up fast and early. I do not consider you a child, Chi-chan. I haven't, since the day you killed that man."

_Did he know_?

Okay, he wasn't _always _direct about his opinions. There was his somewhat infamous"Do you really think you should do that?" question that he posed to the children. If a child was unwise enough to answer in the affirmative, generally speaking, the next question he asked was, "Why was that a bad idea?"

Kenshin continued, "One of the things I worry about for you, Chi-chan, is what happens to you if something happens to _me_."

"Nothing's going to happen to you!"

"Hnnh. I've had one close call too many. Immortal is a misnomer. Immortal implies we can't be killed. We are very mortal, that we are. Darius told me that the average lifespan of new Immortals is under six months. If you survive six months, then the average lifespan is no more than ten years. Other, bigger, stronger Immortals are always out there, always hunting. There are only a handful of us who have lived more than a century. Of those, many are evil, tainted by the heads they've taken. Darius says taking heads changes you, Chi-chan. That is something I've _seen _in you, and something I caution you about."

"Figured that one out, already."

Though .. she had to admit, speaking English fluently and having knowledge of the Western world was proving to be most useful. And the other Immortal had _needed _to die. She still wondered who had sent him after Kenshin, though.

"Mm." Was all he said.

In town, he led the way to a small Anglican church near the heart of the community. She sensed the other Immortal -- old, powerful -- as they approached the rectory behind the church itself. "Darius?" She questioned.

"I want you to meet him. If you need a refuge other than the house, come here, Chi-chan. I'm sure he'll welcome you."

The priest opened the door as they approached. Some part of Chiyoko's brain calculated, _If I were to take that man's head, I'd never have to worry about another Immortal touching me again. I could be the One, at the end, the last one left. _

The thought ... shocked her. She shook her head, stunned.

Darius was tall, standing in the doorway. Thin. His features had more character than beauty to them. He raised an eyebrow at her. She wondered if he'd somehow sensed her thoughts. But he simply said, "Come in. I was expecting you to bring your protégé by, Kenshin."

Inside, Darius said, with some amusement, "That must have been some party Jessica threw last night. The gossip is already started."

"_Oro, _yes," Kenshin agreed, not sounding exactly approving.

"That child has always had a wild streak. Her father gave her little guidance growing up; she's been the source of many a visit to the confessional." His eyes twinkled. "She's not a bad girl, though -- I've always liked her. She means well."

Kenshin grinned. "I'm fond of Jessica; you are correct in that she means well, and she complements my son nicely. -- Darius-sama, this is my daughter, Chiyoko. She's fifteen -- sixteen, in a few months."

"You are fortunate," Darius said to her, as he held the door open for them to enter. "To have one such as Kenshin to guide you."

She could agree with that. "I got lucky, if you could call it that, I guess. When I woke up on my own funeral pyre and caused a panic, the police officer investigating knew about Immortals and knew Kenshin is a sucker," Kenshin snorted behind her, "Though I could've stood to _wait _a few years before meeting him, though."

Darius chuckled. "Yes, I can see why you'd believe that. -- Would you two like some coffee or tea? I'd offer Kenshin a drink, but given the way he's squinting, I think he might have had too much last night. Perhaps coffee would be better."

She shot a look at Kenshin. Kenshin had a hangover? She'd never even noticed.

And he'd been training with her. Hard.

Well, she'd always suspected Kenshin-papa had a masochistic streak to go with his sadistic tendencies. Now she had her confirmation.

"Coffee," Kenshin said distinctly, "Would be wonderful."

------------------


	55. Chapter 55

Author's note As I've noted before, I tend to post chapters to my livejournal account (I am ljmouse -- note the "J" in ljmouse) before I put them here on ffnet. This is mostly because hates me and I have difficulty posting here.

------------

Shinya's hangover was slowly abating as he sat in the parlor. He was on his third cup of tea, and he was reluctantly contemplating the prospect of some exercise.

Fuzzily, he watched as Bessie scrubbed food from the wood floor. Someone had dropped a plate of something sticky on the floor; the unidentified but sugary substance had flowed underneath a large overstuffed chair. She started to lean her shoulder against the chair to move it. Bessie wasn't very big, and he could see her straining.

"Here, I help," he rose, and shoved the chair aside.

"Thank you, Mr. Myojin." Bessie gave him a sideways look, clearly not entirely at ease.

"You're welcome. -- Bessie, you like Richard Marshall?"

That caused her to pause in her cleaning. She sat back on her heels, and regarded him suspiciously. "He's Miss Marshall's great-uncle."

That, he noted, was not exactly an answer. It was more of an evasion.

He wasn't entirely sure how old the maid was; mid twenties, perhaps. He didn't think she was old enough to have noticed Marshall wasn't aging, and he hadn't heard any rumors from the older servants about him. He was given to understand that Marshall had avoided this part of the country for more than twenty years -- and he had one of those faces that could be anywhere between a well-weathered forty and a robust sixty.

It was unfortunate that Kenshin had died so young, Shinya thought -- a pretty young man who didn't age was a _lot _more noticeable than an older man with a bit of grey in his hair. People probably just thought that Marshall was 'well preserved.'

_We use salt. _-- That had always been Sano's line, about Kenshin, delivered with a an absolutely devilish smirk. It had only been funny because Sanosuke said it, because Sanosuke could make _anything _funny. Unexpected pain flared at the equally unexpected reminder of the friend they'd lost. Sanosuke had wholly accepted Kenshin; had loved him like a brother; had often teased him mercilessly when no one else would dare.

_Sano should be here. Sanosuke would have been the life of the party last night. And I'd give years of my life up to introduce Byron to him. After he got done teasing _me, _Sano and Byron would hit it right off. And Byron needs more friends ..._

He forced himself to focus on the conversation with Bessie and not think of that grief. Sanosuke would never know Byron; Byron would never know Sano. That hurt.

Right. He was grilling Bessie about Marshall, because servants always knew the best gossip. "Do people like him?"

She was silent for a moment, then shook her head. "It's not my place to say, Mr. Myojin."

She was done scrubbing the mess off the floor; he pushed the chair back with his hip. "I'm just concerned about him, Bessie. I ..."

She rocked back on her heels and looked up at him. Shortly, she said, "_Be _concerned."

But try as he might, she wouldn't say more than that. That wasn't exactly reassuring. He had no idea if her statement of _be concerned _had to do with awareness that Marshall wasn't mortal, or if it had to do with something else.

_She is almost sixteen_, he told himself, with a sigh. While he strongly disapproved, it wasn't as if she was a small child. And she'd been willing, much as that made him want to smack her.

-----------------

Shinya was doing katas on the grass in the garden. He wore only a loose pair of hakama and, in the muggy afternoon heat, had shed his top. Byron watched from terrace as the younger man spun through a series of acrobatic leaps. He was incredibly fit -- muscles rippled as he moved. He didn't have a spare ounce of fat on his wiry frame.

Katas apparently finished, Shinya dropped to the ground and started doing pushups. Byron leaned on the terrace railing, trying to look like he was admiring the view. Well, he _was _-- just not the view of the pretty trees and flowers. It was the view five feet below him, twenty feet out, bobbing up and down on the grass with effortless ease, that held his attention. Thinking he was being covert about it, he glanced down every few moments.

Shinya started doing _one armed _push-ups.

"Okay," an amused voice growled, very loudly, "now you're showing off, Shinya-kun."

Byron spun around, nearly lost his balance, and caught himself on the terrace wall. He hadn't heard Kenji approach behind him. Kenji smirked. Byron blushed, aware that he'd probably been more obvious about his interest than he'd intended.

"Go for a running!" Shinya called up to both of them. Byron glanced back in time to see him roll to his feet. He waved and then took off jogging.

"Do you guys _ever _stop training?" Byron said, with some amusement. "I swear you must work a couple hours a day to keep fit."

Kenji's lips twitched in amusement. "Kaoru and Shinta and I ran a school in Tokyo. Shinya helped, sometimes, too. And his father. We work more than that, then. Classes all day. -- I think Shinya's avoiding me."

"Do you wonder why?" Byron turned back to the garden, resting his elbows on the terrace wall and taking his weight off his withered leg. His hip ached; it often did, in bad weather or when he wasn't careful about how he used it. Sitting crosslegged for hours last night hadn't been good for his joints. "He feels terrible about the whole mess with Chiyoko. She loves him, doesn't she?"

"Hnnh. Not love -- a crush, perhaps." Kenji sighed. "I'll talk him later. He's an idiot, but all people are sometimes, and Shinya means well. -- And don't bother trying to hide that you're attracted to him. It isn't fooling anyone here, and I personally don't care."

Byron felt an instant flush hit his cheeks at Kenji's change of subject. "I was just ..."

"Watching Shinya do kata. Yes. I saw."

Byron glanced over at his brother. Kenji was smirking at him.

"Am I _that _obvious?" He said, bitterly.

"Heh. -- Shinya might return your, umm," he could see Kenji searching for the right word. "... your interest?"

"Yeah, he told me last night." Byron blushed harder. Kenji didn't look the slightest bit surprised. Even though all they'd done was _talk, _just the thought anyone might _think _they were doing more made him almost terrified with fear for himself -- and for Shinya. Very cautiously, because Kenji didn't seem mad at all, he said, "You're not upset?"

Kenji snorted. "Break his heart and I'll be mad. Get him in trouble with English no baka, and I'll be very angry. Otherwise, I don't care. Just be ... discrete." Kenji's expression softened. "And -- know that I don't think bad of either of you for this."

"Kenji?"

"Hnnh?"

"I'm glad you weren't raised here." Byron sighed. "If you were ... you might have ended up like my other brothers. I'm glad for what happened to you. You're somebody I'm glad to know."

Kenji said, "It's mutual, ototo. Glad to know you too."

Nobody, Byron thought, had ever said anything to him like that before, that they were simply happy to know him. _I wish you'd never been born! _Had once been William's favorite refrain, generally after somebody hassled him about his brother's ... preferences, when they were younger. Nowadays, William was more sophisticated in his insults. It was George and Basil who were generally the violent ones and William who made the painfully cutting remarks.

"Ototo?" He questioned, not sure what the word meant.

"Umm, means younger brother. Ani is older brother."

"Ani?"

"Hai. -- Means yes." Kenji reached a hand out and ruffled his hair. The gesture was casually affectionate; he'd seen his brother do much the same with Shinya and Chiyoko and with his younger adopted siblings. Kenji's fingers were strong, callused, gentle. "I wish I come home sooner, Byron. I am sad, angry, about what happen here. Very bad."

Byron froze, for a second; he wasn't sure if he should _like _being treated like a much-younger sibling. There was only two years between them. And he got a feeling the hair-tousling was something that Kenji would do with children, not adults. It really ought to be annoying, at best.

On the other hand, Kenji ... liked him.

Called him _younger brother_. And teased him, gently, about his crush on the young man who was Kenji's very good friend, and even encouraged him to pursue that interest, with only a caution that amounted to, _Don't get caught_.

That was a damn sight better than the treatment he got from his other brothers. It was approval, even.

He didn't protest the hair-ruffling. It felt good to be _liked_.

They stood side by side in companionable silence for a moment. It was a nice afternoon, sunny, with puffy clouds sliding by overhead. Below, Shinta appeared, around a corner of the house, apparently headed for the same patch of green lawn that Shinya had been using. He saw them, looked up, waved, and then started into a series of far more elaborate -- and athletic -- kata than Shinya had been doing earlier.

"What's his story?" Byron asked.

"I don't understand?"

"Shinta's this friendly little guy who everybody likes, until he ... isn't. I didn't miss the look he gave Sir Basil. And he's obviously a far better swordsmen than all of you combined ..." Shinta did a backflip with sword in hand, hair a red banner contrasting against the green grass, "... and you all respect him. Who _is _he?"

"Ask Shinta that question." Kenji sighed. "I'd tell all to you, ototo, but not my story."

"I'm not sure I want to ask! He scares me."

Kenji snorted. "He scares me too, sometimes, and I've known for as long as I can remember. But he really is as friendly as he seem, Byron."

Byron tilted his head sideways. There was amusement in Kenji's words that didn't entirely make sense to Byron. He asked, "How old is he?"

Kenji hesitated. "Twenty-eight."

"I wouldn't have guessed he was that old," Byron shot the man another look. He was so small boned and delicate, with fair pale skin and that quick, open, innocent smile. Byron also remembered amber eyes and a threatening stance directed at Basil. He'd looked ancient, then -- some creature out of faery tales, something that might have come out of a hollow hill. A vengeful creature of fey, perhaps.

He was letting his fancies -- and his bookwormish tendencies -- run away with him. He shook his head, trying to dispel the image of Kenshin as a daoine sidhe. Such things did not exist.

Kenji said, with a snort, "I've seen his papers."

It took Byron a moment to realize that Kenji was talking about a birthdate on legal paperwork. He shrugged. "You are lucky to have so many good friends and family."

"Hai. I am." Again, a friendly smile directed his way. Byron realized that Kenji likely considered him part of that family now.

"Lord Kenji?" It was Bessie, the maid. "I'm sorry to bother you, but Viscount Trevor is here to see you."

Kenji made a curiously irritated sound, just as Byron turned again to the house, as if expecting his grandfather to step out now. His heart sank. "Want you to see grandfather?"

Byron didn't have to think long about that answer. "No."

"Then go on up to your room -- use the back stairs. I'll tell him you're not receiving visitors."

---------------

Viscount Trevor was seated in the parlor, nibbling at a tray of fancy pastries that the made had brought him.

"Grandfather," Kenji said, politely. "Welcome."

"I hear you had quite the party here last night," Trevor said, sounding amused.

Kenji sighed. 'Quite the party' was an understatement; they had only packed the last of the drunken guests off an hour ago. He was exhausted, despite having passed out from lack of sleep rather than drink for several hours. Servants were wonderful when they could be trusted to keep an eye on drunken guests sleeping it off on the floor. _Marshall _had been so plastered that Kenji had needed to pick the older man up out of a pool of his own vomit in the hall, and drag him back to his room. "How bad of scandal?"

"Oh, the society biddies are already gossiping like mad. Don't see as that sort of party's ever hurt Miss Marshall's business interests. She's rich enough that people will deal with her anyway," Trevor said, with a shrug. "She's thrown one or two like that a year. -- You look surprised."

Kenji winced, thinking of future parties like this. He'd hoped it was a one-time aberration. "I ... am surprised. A little."

"I think she does it to thumb her nose at society, quite honestly," Trevor said, with a wink. "She doesn't hold much stock in stuffy proper behavior."

"Hardly." He pinched the bridge of his nose under his glasses.

"Having second thoughts about marrying her?" Trevor said, with a slow grin.

"Hardly!" Kenji said, shocked at the suggestion. "The party was fun, just ... much."

"At any rate. I had a couple things I wished to discuss with you, Alastair, before I head back to London on business -- do you have a little while?" Trevor seemed almost hesitant.

"I have time." Kenji said. In truth, _time _was something he had plenty of. It wasn't like he had a job. "Is this about Byron?"

The viscount sighed and leaned back in his chair. "That is one of the things. Basil said you and Shinta and Shinya threatened him when he came to bring Byron home."

"I make no apology for that." Kenji said, tightly. "He beat Byron badly. It is not the first time."

"Nobody ever died from a whipping," Trevor said, dismissively.

Kenji snorted. "He had an infection severe enough that we kept him in bed for two days. His back has _still _not healed entirely."

Trevor hesitated. A look of honest surprise crossed his face. "That badly?"

"Yes. That badly." Kenji's voice was tight and angry. "Basil used a fencing foil. It split the skin. He has at least a dozen stripes. Some of them best to be sewn up, bad that they not be. It is _not the first time_."

"I ... wasn't aware that it was that bad."

"I thought you approved." Kenji said, angrily. "Byron says you let Basil beat him. He's _twenty-three years old_! He's no little boy. And even a _boy _should not be beaten like that. It's horrible what Basil did. And Byron did nothing wrong!"

"Basil said he ..." Trevor looked embarrassed. "Basil said he ... propositioned a stable boy. The boy is _ten_."

"Basil _lied_," Kenji said, with absolute conviction. Byron's shock at the very idea had been too raw and too real. "All Byron did was sit and watch the boy saddle his horse. That's it. Hardly improper behavior. Ask the boy what happened."

Trevor shook his head. "Jessie came to me. He was upset that Byron got beaten. He said Basil didn't do anything -- said the same thing you just told me. I wasn't sure if the boy was embarrassed or if Basil had ..." he trailed off, pinching the bridge of his nose and looking very tired and suddenly very old. "I don't know, Kenji. I just don't know what to think."

_Kenji_. Kenji blinked at that. He'd asked Trevor a time or two to use his real name -- _Kenji _was his name, son of Kenshin -- not Alastair. It was the first time Trevor had called him that.

Trevor continued, "All four of them ... I don't know what to do with them, Kenji. William whines, George is a surly bastard who's far too quick with his fists and judges before he has all the facts, and Basil ... Basil, I asked years ago to help raise the boys because I travel so very much. After their father never came home, I asked him to step in. He's their maternal cousin, for crying out loud, twenty years older -- you'd think he'd care about his cousins! He said he wanted to make them his own ... but he's never been a father to them, just a dictator."

Trevor ran a hand over his face again. "And then there's Byron. He was my favorite when you boys were small. Begging your pardon, Kenji, but it's true. He's ... well, he was always _happy _as a baby, and a toddler. It was only later that he grew so morose and reserved. Yet he still manages to provoke his brothers on a regular basis. Usually, if there's fighting in the house, he's at the center of it."

"He's been no trouble here," Kenji shook his head. He didn't have to be Kenshin to guess at the dynamic there -- likely Byron was a convenient target for blame. Basil was willing to believe it, or even used Byron as a scapegoat himself. And Trevor was only hearing Basil's side of the story. Trevor, he was guessing, found it convenient to believe Basil's side of things.

"He looks up to you." Trevor said. "He .." Trevor blew a sharp, short breath out. "Can I see him? Talk to him?"

"I'm not sure that's a good idea. I don't think he wants to see any of you right now," Kenji said. He was a bit sorry that he'd promised Byron he wouldn't have to talk to Trevor. Because Trevor actually sounded reasonable. What he _really _wanted to do was to march his grandfather up to Byron's room, make Byron take shirt off, and show Trevor just _how _bad Basil had beaten him. To judge by the amount of salve and bandages that Shinya was still using, Byron's back was far from healed.

And to Trevor's credit, he seemed willing to take a second look at the family's dynamics. Just, Kenji thought, it was about twenty years too late.

"I have to go on a business trip in two weeks. I'd like to see him before then." Trevor said, quietly. Then, he continued, "Kenji, I need someone to manage my affairs at the manor house while I go overseas. I do not trust Basil nor any of your brothers. Given that this house is part of _your _inheritance, I expect that you will have far more of a vested interest in maintaining things, as it were, than they will."

"You don't know me ..."

Trevor snorted, again. "I have a business associate from Japan. I asked him to look into matters. He indicated that the dojo that you ran with your mother and father was respectable, financially solvent, and that you have always conducted yourself in a proper manner. -- Incidentally, may I express my condolences that those superstitious foreign barbarians killed your adoptive father's friend?"

Kenji winced. _Foreign barbarians _was worse than _orientals, _by far. "My friend, too. Like a brother to my father.. And you have been doing ..." The only word he could think was _gossip_, which didn't seem right. And just how much had Trevor found out about Sano's death?

"I would be a fool not to verify your story." Viscount Trevor said, with a polite smile, guessing at Kenji's meaning. "I'm very pleased to say that your story was verified by an influential doctor in town _and _a police chief."

_Heh_,thought Kenji, _I'll bet they verified everything. And in ways that didn't reveal Shinta's secret. We should make sure that Saito does know about my father's new identity. -- Though I wouldn't put it past Saito to _know _that his birth name is Shinta and to come to a logical conclusion if the name Shinta Kamiya was mentioned._

Personally, he thought his father was being a bit _obvious _with the name -- but then, Kenshin could probably go as _Kenshin _here and nobody would ever recognize him. So perhaps a name he was likely to remember to respond to was, in fact, a good idea.

And he got the idea that Kenshin _liked _being Shinta again. It was a name that had been his before he was a hitokiri; perhaps he was reclaiming a bit of his lost childhood by again using the name. Kenji didn't really know. Kaoru had quietly speculated on that to him, recently.

"What do you need me to do?"

The old man brightened, a real smile touching his lips. "Excellent! If you'll come to the manor house tomorrow I'll start giving you the details. Essentially, I need someone to act in my stead on household matters. Mostly, that will be overseeing the staff, which is quite large. And making sure your brothers do not drink all the wine or spend too much money on frivolous things. Or abuse the staff; George has a tendency to throw tantrums at them, and I've lost good employees over it. Also, I've given leave to some of my business associates and friends to visit while I am away for vacations in the country. If you could make sure they are comfortable, I would appreciate it."

"How long will you be gone?"

"A few months. I've some affairs to settle in Russia. I'm selling a factory on the coast."

Kenji raised an eyebrow. "Getting out because of coming war?"

"Like a rat from a sinking ship," his grandfather said, cheerfully. "Japan will _slaughter _them."

"Probably," Kenji said, with cheerful pride in his adopted country. Then he shook his head, knowing what his father would say. Kenshin had no love of battle. "Many people die, not a good thing. _Politics_. No point in war. Better to treat each other with fair -- fairness?"

"Hnnh. Wise boy."

"Wise _father_," Kenji said, meaning Kenshin.

"But wasn't he some sort of war hero?"

"A hitokiri -- an elite assassin, yes. He regrets. He do not think he is a hero." Kenji frowned. "I'll certainly handle your household, and anything else you wish of me. That is no trouble. I have little to do in any event."

-------------------------

Shinya returned from his jog damp with sweat, stinking, wishing for a bath house. Jessica was having one built -- and the foundation had already been laid -- but until then, he'd have to make do with water hauled in buckets into the house and heated over a fire, then dumped into a tub.

He pushed the door to his room open and found Byron sitting on his bed, reading a book. "Your grandfather, downstairs," he said, not sure if Byron knew.

"I know. I'm avoiding him. I hope you don't mind me in here. My room is on the sunny side of the house and it's rather warm in there. I'd go down to the library, but I am avoiding Grandfather ..."

"No, not at all," Shinya said. In truth, he was happy to see Byron. Absently, he stripped off his sweat-soaked shirt and threw it into a corner of the room then flopped face-first onto the bed. "Nggg. I ran all the way into town and _back_. I'm beat."

Byron was silent, next to him. And very still.

"I'm stinky," Shinya said, apologetically.

"I don't mind." Very shyly, Byron added, "You look ..."

He trailed off.

Shinya rolled over onto his back. Byron was blushing tremendously, and staring at the wall. Shinya smirked. Teasing was his first impulse; _teasing _was something that came quite naturally to a son of Yahiko. But instead he forced himself to be serious, and he said calmly and quietly, "Byron. It's okay. I know you like me. And I like you like me."

He _hoped _that he'd gotten his meaning across -- that he was perfectly okay with Byron liking him and admiring his looks. More than okay, actually.

Very shyly, Byron stammered, "Your hair. I like your hair."

If not teasing, _that _comment at least called for a bit of sarcasm. "Many people do. It _is _why I grow it long."

Byron gave him an incredulous look.

Right. The sort of humor that made most of his friends and family bust out laughing -- in the case of his long, flawless black hair, _everyone _knew he was vain about it -- wouldn't necessarily make Byron laugh. Mostly, Shinya suspected it was a language barrier thing, coupled with Byron's rather annoyingly excessive wariness. Byron was probably wondering if he'd really _meant _to sound so conceited.

He had, but only jokingly.

Shinya reached a hand out and rested it on Byron's arm. "I'm being funny. At least, I thought I am being funny."

Byron gave him a smile that looked relieved now, and a trifle embarrassed. "Sorry I didn't laugh. I just ... have my mind on other things." A brighter blush. "Like you."

Shinya chuckled, glad to hear a bit of humor. And Byron picking on him, as far as he was concerned, was a very good thing.

"Hey, I'm being serious!" Byron looked wounded at Shinya's laughter.

"Sorry." He sobered, blinked. That had been meant as an honest comment? Every friend that Shinya had would _only _say something like that with mocking intent. "I thought you were teasing."

"I meant it." Byron sighed. He almost looked scared, now, as if afraid the admission was going to be met with a rebuke.

Shinya sat up, cupping his fingers behind his head, and blushing a bit himself. "Hey. Serious is good too."

Given the context, he thought it was a _damn _good thing. It spoke of at least a little trust. And he wanted this man to trust him, with a rather frighteningly desperate intensity. He added, "Sorry to laugh. I think you joking."

"No." Byron said, sounding miserable now.

Shinya idly wondered what would happen if he simply kissed the man. It was very tempting to do it, but he was more than a little frightened of Byron's reaction. And -- there was something about this nervous, awkward, puppyish man that _appealed_. The previous night had been a tremendous amount of fun; he hadn't laughed so hard for as long as he could remember. He didn't want to screw this up.

Though finding out later what _Chi-chan _had been up to had been rather depressing, at best. He'd screwed up there, royally. Which was another reason to be hesitant. He didn't want to hurt Byron the same way, somehow.

His expression must have betrayed his dark thoughts, because Byron said, seriously, "Is something wrong?"

"Yeah." He rolled back over and buried his face in the pillows.

"I'm sorry! What did ..."

"_You _didn't do anything." Shinya growled, looking up at Byron, who was staring over his shoulder at him in alarm. "Chiyoko ... promise me you won't tell? Because I have to talk to _someone _and anyone else is going to Kenshin after talking to me."

"Uh, sure ..." Byron twisted around on the bed, pulling his crippled leg up by the hem of his trousers and sitting crosslegged in one fluid motion.

Head resting on his arms, face buried in the too-soft Western pillow, he told Byron what he'd discovered about Chiyoko and Marshall. Byron was silent for a long bit after he was done. When he looked up, Byron's face was as troubled as he felt.

"How old is she?" Byron asked, quietly.

"She'll be sixteen this fall, in Western years." Shinya sighed. "She looks young."

"She looks like a _kid_. I couldn't figure out why you were courting her." Byron blew a sharp breath out. "Figured it was a weird Japanese thing."

"Weird Japanese ..." Shinya threw the pillow at him. This knocked Byron's glasses askew.

He grabbed it and tossed it back, hitting Shinya in the head, then settled his glasses back onto his face. "... you guys _are _strange." Byron snorted. "Mostly, a good strange."

"Us strange?" Shinya chucked the pillow back, harder. "Don't get me started how odd you Brits are!"

Byron caught the pillow, wrapped his arms around it, and regarded Shinya thoughtfully. Those blue eyes were intelligent, and Shinya could tell he was thinking hard. "You should tell Kenji."

"She made me promise not to tell anyone." Shinya said, miserably.

"So? You told me." Byron rested his chin on the top of the pillow.

"Because I had to talk to someone and _you're _not going to tell anyone. You promised." Shinya shook his head.

"I'm sorry I did, now ..." Byron sighed. His blue eyes regarded Shinya thoughtfully. "What if she gets pregnant?"

"She can't." Shinya sighed. "She can't have babies. -- She told me that when we were ... it's a long story, but she can't." He honestly hadn't minded that bit; having been raised with Kenshin as an role model, he would have been more than happy to adopt children.

"Mmph. Well, at least there's that. I can't see Marshall marrying her if she turned up with a bun on the oven." Byron frowned. "He's what, fifty years old or something? Or -- older than that. He used to come around my grandfather's place when we were kids. I swear the man hasn't changed a bit since I was little."

Shinya sighed. "He's too old. And he's ... Shinta doesn't like him, Byron, and Shinta's usually got a good reason."

"What's Shinta's story?" Byron asked. "You guys give him all sorts of respect, and he just has so much presence."

Shinya frowned. "Ask Shinta that. It's his story to tell, if he wants to. I trust you -- but it's his call."

He expected Kenshin would fill Byron in sooner or later, actually; Byron was Kenji's brother, and would probably need to know eventually.

"Kenji said the same thing," Byron complained. He shook his head, "Why's he training Chiyoko and not you guys?"

Shinya shrugged. How to explain, _The girl's really a Immortal who will live forever if somebody doesn't take her head off? _-- That was _definitely _a job for Kenshin to tackle. Shinya didn't even want to go there for multiple reasons, not the least of which was that Byron would think him a complete lunatic.

"You think _he _might have something to say about Marshall? He and Chiyoko are obviously close." Byron's suggestion made logical sense, from the standpoint of him not knowing _all _the details.

Shinya snorted. "Shinta is the _last _person I talk to about this."

"Would he hurt Marshall?"

"Aa. Possibly. And Marshall's Jessica's uncle. If Shinta goes after Marshall, it puts Jessica -- and Kenji -- in a bad spot. There's got to be a better way to handle this." He ran a hand over his face and confessed, "Honestly, if I thought she was going to go sleep with Marshall, I never would have said no ... push her away. I'd have _married _her first."

"But ..." Byron looked hurt. He looked away.

Shinya shrugged weakly. "I care about her, Byron. She's a good friend. I -- maybe I be happy with her. But ..." he pointed at himself, "... not what _I _want."

"You could still ... if you don't mind you're not her first, maybe apologize to her?" Byron suggested hesitantly. He didn't sound very sure of that answer. "_Grovel _a bit? Tell her you do want to marry her?"

Shinya rose, walked to the window, stared out it. Viscount Trevor's carriage was headed up the road, horses trotting smartly. He said, finally, "But I don't. I'd lie, if I said marriage. It's not what _I _want. And she would know, eventually. That would hurt her worse. She needs to find someone who _loves _her _and _is good for her. Not Marshall!"

"Do you think it's possible they love each other?" Byron said, carefully.

Shinya snorted. "I highly doubt it. Chiyoko, maybe. Marshall? No."

He sat back down on the bed, and leaned back with his weight on his hands behind him. After a moment, he glanced over at Byron, who was still holding the pillow in his arms, but was watching him with those very blue, very intelligent eyes. "I could kill Marshall."

Byron laughed. "You could do it, but then you'd end up hanging for it."

"True." Shinya flopped back. "_That _bad."

"Maybe poison," Byron suggested. "In his tea."

Byron's eyes were crinkled up with dark amusement. The man's sense of humor was _black_, Shinya decided. He was kidding.

"With my luck," Shinya rolled over and buried his face in his arms again. "Chiyoko would drink it."


	56. Chapter 56

Chapter 57

-----------------

Kenshin had concluded within a day of arrival at Jessica's manor that Jessica's mother was a formidable woman. He also was fairly sure that he actually _liked _her. Her motives were simple and easy for him to understand -- she wanted what was best for her daughter, and she was worried about appearances.

__

Saving face, Kenshin understood all too well.

He was seated at a desk in the library, drafting a letter to Yahiko -- and worrying about a dearth of letters back from anyone -- when she approached him two days after Jessica's rather wild party.

"Mr. Kamiya."

He glanced over his shoulder, then rose when he realized who it was, and made a polite bow, and said, "Mrs. Marshall."

"May we speak?"

"Aa. What can I do for you?" He said, with some caution, because Mrs. Marshall also had a temper and a harsh tongue. And she didn't approve of him, or the rest of his family, on the principle of _this doesn't look good for my daughter_. He didn't think there was any _personal _feelings of dislike there based solely on his heritage -- at first, perhaps, there had been, but he thought she was much warmer towards him now. Or, at least, not frigid.

"I wish to talk to you about the children."

"Myself, and not Kaoru?" Because as far as this woman knew, he was simply a relative -- a cousin, according to his somewhat forged immigration paperwork -- and _not _the children's father,

She made a slight face. "Mrs. Kamiya is ... difficult."

__

Heh, Kenshin thought. On this point, he agreed with Mrs. Marshall. Kaoru wasn't nearly as forgiving of Mrs. Marshall's attitude as he was. He understood it, did not take it personally, and he believed time and a persistent attitude of _friendly _would win her over. And given that, very likely, he would know this woman for the rest of her life -- and that sooner or later she _would _need to learn his secret -- he knew it was very important to gain her approval.

He'd explained all this to Kaoru.

And Kaoru was having none of it.

Sometimes, as much as he loved her, there were times when he just wanted to shake Kaoru until her teeth clacked together. Kaoru was offended by Emily Marshall's arrogant attitude. She found her cold and distant at best. She resented the woman's condescending tone when she struggled with the language -- and of all of them, Kaoru was having the most difficulty, perhaps because she had no _patience _-- and she was extremely upset by Mrs. Marshall's lack of tolerance with her knowledge of the culture.

All of that irritated Kenshin, but it incensed Kaoru. Her fiery temper was being held in check only by his pleas for restraint -- and then, only barely. And only because _he _was the one asking. And then only because she did understand his reasoning.

But where Kenshin could apply logic and reason to almost any situation, Kaoru largely used emotion and opinion to guide her actions. _He _had learned the hard way that operating on emotion alone was a very bad idea.

He sighed. "What do you want me to discuss with her?"

__

That got him a wry smile from this woman. He had guessed accurately what she wanted.

"She respects you," Mrs. Marshall observed.

"Aa. We respect each other, in truth, that we do," Kenshin said, quietly.

Mrs. Marshall nodded. "You're about the only person who can get her to see reason, I've noted."

Kenshin's eyes crinkled into a grin. "Sometimes."

"At any rate, I wished to talk to you about the children's education."

Oh. He remembered this subject from a rant by Kaoru the week before. He held a hand up. "The children are not Christian, Mrs. Marshall. I know that you wish for them to attend a school for religious instruction. However, I agree with Kaoru on this point. It is not right for them."

She pursed her lips into a thin line, disapproving immensely. "It wouldn't hurt _you _to attend some services. Perhaps if you knew more _about _Christianity you would not be such a ..."

He drummed his fingers on the desk. His _look _made her fall silent before she could deliver an insult. He let warning creep into his expression, and suspected his eyes were displaying just a hint of gold. "I will make a compromise with you, Mrs. Marshall, for the sake of peace. Do you know Father Darius?"

She suddenly brightened. "Of course!"

He didn't wish his children to be indoctrinated and brainwashed, as he was certain the school she had in mind would attempt to do. However, he saw absolutely no problem -- and quite a few advantages -- to them _learning _about the religion of the land. It would help them understand this foreign world they found themselves living in. "If Father Darius agrees, I will take the children to study with him once a week."

"He's a very busy man ..." she said, doubtfully.

Kenshin shrugged. "He is a scholar. I respect him. _He _will treat the children with the courtesy they deserve."

"You can ask," she said, still dubious.

He held a finger up. "However, as a compromise, I also wish for the children to have regular schooling."

She made a skeptical sound. "I doubt that any of the local schools of any merit would accept them."

"Because they are Japanese?" She was probably right. And he suspected the harassment they would receive from other children -- because children were so terribly cruel to one another -- might make that, on more reflection, a bad idea. "In that case -- a tutor."

"That would be very expensive."

Serenely, and with absolute confidence of her answer, he said, "I will ask Jessica."

She shook her head. "I'm sure Jessica will agree. She's foolishly fond of Mrs. Kamiya's children."

"As am I. They are very good children, and they are Kenji's siblings," Kenshin said, with no trace of irony. "I, too, am very fond of them. I want nothing more than to see them succeed in the world."

"Hmm." She gave him a look.

"Is this not also what you wish for your daughter?" He pointed out.

"Hmm. Well. I may know of a woman who might be an acceptable tutor."

He nodded gravely. "I will discuss the matter with Kaoru, but I suspect that she will agree to it."

Mrs. Marshall settled into a chair, looking suddenly very tired. "I wish my own daughter was as well behaved as Mrs. Kamiya's children, Shinta. Those kids are so very polite. Jessica -- was raised by her father, who allowed her to run wild. And traveled the world with her. I suspect she would be much more a lady if he had followed my advice and hired a proper governess for her."

Kenshin said, quietly, "Jessica is perhaps a bit wild, but she is not _bad_, Mrs. Marshall, that she isn't. There is no cruelty nor anger in her heart. She has a joy for life, an enthusiasm, that few people have."

She glanced at him, studying his face. Then she observed, with some surprise, and with a definite change of subject, "Your English is improving by the day, Shinta."

"I listen. I learn." He knew his vocabulary was better; his accent, he suspected, was going to be harder to get eliminate. He'd left Jessica in stitches of laughter this morning by advising her that he missed sticky lice with his breakfasts. (The English habit of frying bread and serving eggs piled on it was going to leave him as wide as he was tall, if he wasn't careful.)

"You are a very intelligent man."

"Some might claim that. I have very little of what you would call an education, that I do not." He smiled, briefly, remembering the number of times that Hiko had called him a _fool _and a _simpleton_. "Would it be possible for this humble man to join the children with the tutor? I suspect they will study harder if they see me wishing to study as well, and I would truly like to learn more. And learn to read and write in English."

"Hmm," she said.

"And Kaoru too."

"What about Mr. Myojin?" she asked. Apparently, she didn't disapprove of the idea.

"If he wants to join," Kenshin said, brightly, "Of course. Though I saw Byron teaching him letters this morning."

Her expression clouded over. "You are aware of that young man's reputation, are you not?"

Kenshin gave her his brightest, sunniest, most ruruoni smile, "No. Tell me?"

She blushed. "Ask Jessica. She's better at not being embarrassed by scandalous matters. Suffice to say he has a most _improper_ reputation.;"

"Ah." Kenshin said and smiled again. "I shall make a point of remembering that."

"This is a serious matter, Mr. Kamiya."

"Reputations are always a serious matter."

"Merely associating with him could ruin Mr. Myojin's reputation."

Kenshin mulled over his identities over his life -- peasant, slave, hitokiri, penniless wanderer, laundry boy. He shrugged. "A bad reputation does not mean a person is bad."

She vented an exasperated sigh.

"Did you not disapprove of me when we first?" He prompted, gently. "Based solely on what you thought my race was like?"

She gave him an uncertain look. But he thought he'd made his point, so he had mercy on her, and said, "I shall go talk to Kaoru."

----------------

Kaoru didn't approve.

She glared at him, pale blue eyes hostile, arms folded, shoulders set in hunched lines of unhappiness. With some derision, she repeated, "Religious instruction, Kenshin?"

"Education, Kaoru." He tried for patience, and mostly succeeded. Though even _his _famously even temper was being tested at the moment.

"With a _priest_."

They'd been going around in circles on this subject for at least a half hour. He clarified her point. "With Father Darius."

"Who keeps you out until dawn drinking. Hardly a role model."

"You haven't even met him, Kaoru. You're welcome to come with me."

"I'm _tired_. I have no desire to be out all night! Drinking. With men." She stalked to the window. "I hate it here, Kenshin."

Hard words. She'd never spoken them before, because to say them was to blame _him. _Yet she meant them now; he could hear in her voice that this was not an idle complaint.He flinched physically at the emotion behind them. At the real, honest, anger and grief. "I hate it here. I know you believe the children should learn about this country, but I want to take them _home_."

He closed his eyes. There it was at last; the truth of why she didn't want her children to learn about England. Because to learn about it was to commit to it, and to commit to it meant they might not go home -- ever. Surely, that had to be in the back of her mind. It was in his, too; the fear they'd never see Japan again. That months of exile would turn to years and years to decades and decades to her lifetime.

He asked, quietly, "Do you truly want to go home?"

A hitching cry, from her. She sounded heartbroken and lost and his heart broke with her. He rose and stumbled across the floor and wrapped his arms around her. She sank to the ground and he went with her, holding her close. "Shhh. Koishii, shh. This one is sorry, this one is so sorry about this, that he is."

Her arms went around him, holding him fiercely close. "I'm sorry. I couldn't take it anymore. I'm sorry."

"Tell me," he whispered, as her tears soaked his shirt. "Tell me."

"I want to go _home_!" she wailed. "I miss Yahiko and Magumi and Tae and Tsubame. I miss my students! I want to be able to talk to people and I can't ..."

"You'll learn English."

"... No. I _won't_. You learn as easily as you breath, you've _always _been that way. You learn like you were a child yourself!" She clutched his shirt with her callused fingers. "I want to go home. I _hate _it here."

He kissed her forehead, and held her close for a moment, feeling tears prick at his own eyes. He, who never cried. "Kaoru, if you go home, I cannot protect you. But I will not stop you if you choose to leave. I am certain that you could stay with Megumi or Yahiko."

She shoved herself away from him, ripping herself free of his arms, and then she sat on the floor a few feet away, breathing harsh, shivering. "And what of the children, Kenshin? What of _you_?"

"I cannot go back with you, but I will understand if you leave. The children ..." he closed his eyes. "Iku and Aki, we would give a choice. The younger ones, I believe, should stay here. War with Russia is almost inevitable, Kaoru. We both know this. They will be safer here."

His heart was tearing itself apart in his chest. He heard the truth in her words. She wanted to go _home_, and that necessarily meant without him. He would lose his Kaoru to the curse of Immortality -- and he would not be able to protect her.

She made another one of those hitching, hoarse little cries, and said, "But I _can't _leave you!"

He crawled to her and folded her back into his lap. "It is okay. I understand. You did not want to come here to begin with." He kissed her forehead, again. He wanted to tell her so much more, but the words would not come. He never was very good with matters of the heart -- _witness Exhibit A on that account_, he thought bitterly. "If you will be happier ..."

"I will _not _be happier apart from you!" she wailed, hitting him in the chest with her fist. "Don't you get that? Do you _want _me to leave?"

He pulled back a bit and studied her tear-streaked face. She stared back at him, trembling, pale eyes wide and liquid with tears. "I would never _want _you to leave."

"And I will _not _leave my children!"

He winced again, realizing he'd offended her. He only wanted her to be happy. He'd only _ever _wanted her to be happy.

"It's just ... it's just that I'm so alone here."

"You have me." He squeezed her tighter. "You will _always _have me."

"Unless some other Immortal kills you." Her words were bitter and angry.

"_That _is not something I worry about very much." He tried to reassure her. "I carry a sword now, that I do. There are few who could defeat me; fewer still who would _want _to."

She sniffled. She said, in a softer voice, "I'm so alone."

"Shh. You have me. And Kenji. And Shinya. And Chiyoko. And the children. And Jessica. We all love you. You are _not _alone."

"You and Chiyoko," she said, quietly, "spend far more time together than I spend with you."

"She is my student," he said, quietly, but knowing it was true.

"I am your _wife_. And someday I will be older and grayer than I am now, and she will be young and perhaps willing and ..."

He recoiled in shock, releasing her. "You think this one would ... with Chiyoko?" He felt nausea rise in his throat at the thought. "She is like a daughter to me, nothing more!"

"I was little older than she when you asked me for my hand," Kaoru pointed out, bowing her head.

"I asked _you _because I _loved _you." He stared at her in utter dismay. How could she even think such a thing? He shook his head in disbelief, and said, low and earnest, words coming to him now, in desperation "Kaoru. There are two things I want you to believe, because they are true. The first is that I love you with all my heart, and there will _never _be anyone else. When you are old and grey and frail, I will _still _love you, and only you. Do you understand? And when you are gone ..." He let his words trail off, unable to even say, _When you are gone, I will never have another wife._

She blinked at him, because he'd dropped all pretense of humility in his speech, as he did only when he was very, very upset. He _was _very, very upset.

"The second is that I fully understand that this life ..." he gestured around him with one hand. "It isn't what you agreed to when you became my wife. If this ever becomes too much for you, Kaoru, I _will understand _if you wish to leave." He closed his eyes. "Part of me thinks it would be best for you, if you did, if you are this very unhappy."

She stared at him for a long moment. Finally, she whispered, "I don't deserve you."

"That," he said, puffing out a sharp breath, a chuff of air that was almost a laugh, "is supposed to be my line. Come here, Kaoru."

He held his arms open and she crawled back into them. He tucked her head under his chin and held her close. He wished he could make it better, but he didn't know how. He despaired, as he held her, knowing that the person he loved most in all the world was hurting more than he'd ever expected.

After a moment, she said, "I want to spend more time with you, Kenshin."

"Aa." He squeezed her tighter. "Join me, in the mornings, when I jog with Chiyoko. And come with me to talk to Darius. You'll like him. And perhaps -- well, it has been a very long time since I've ridden a horse, but perhaps you would like to ride with me? Jessica said we were free to take her gentler horses out to ride."

"I've never ridden a horse," Kaoru said, with a chuff of amusement.

He hugged her tighter. "There's a first time for everything. And -- when the tutor comes, join her classes with me. Learn English with me."

"I don't think I'll ever learn English."

He said quietly, "You will. It is not a race, Kaoru. I may be learning it faster, but you _will _learn. I will help you."

She snuffled a bit. Clung to him. "I don't want to go home without you."

"Someday," he promised her, "someday, we'll both go." He smoothed her hair with his hand, and stared up over her head, out at a grey sky visible through humidity-fogged glass windows. It would rain later, he thought, irrelevantly. "Kaoru, what do _you _want to do to make it better here?"

"I want to teach, again," she whispered, softly. "I want students. I want to open a dojo."

"I don't know if you'd find any students," he said, quietly, knowing this was important to her, "but we could try. The upper classes here do believe in fitness. Perhaps not for children, but for women ... we can talk to Jessica." He smiled at her. "You _will _need to learn English."

"Mou! I know. And ..." she buried her face in his chest. "I don't know if I'll ever be good at it. And I feel like such an idiot, Kenshin, when I try to speak it and they don't understand me."

"So do I," he said, honestly. "But you have to keep trying."

He rose, and offered her a hand up. There was a basin and a pitcher of water on the top of her dresser. He poured some water out, dipped a washrag in it, and handed it to her. Mutely, she ran it over her face, washing away the tears.

She didn't look much happier. He wondered why he hadn't seen it before. He was usually good at understanding people -- and this was the woman he loved more than life itself. He should have seen this grief sooner, he thought.

Then, slowly, he said, "You've been hiding these feelings, have you not?"

She looked away from him, jaw clenching. After a moment, she said, "I didn't want to trouble you. You have too many worries as it is. I want you to be happy."

"Kaoru ..."

She met his look and smiled wanly. "You're a wanderer at heart, Kenshin. You're happy enough here -- this is a grand adventure, for you. I didn't want to take that happiness away from you simply because I am miserable."

He bowed his head, humbled by her love. And saddened, too, because she was sacrificing her own happiness for his. "Kaoru, I promise you this -- you _will _be a part of my life here, fully a part of it. Tonight, I promised Darius I would meet him after dinner. Will you come with me? I think you will like him. And he speaks fluent Japanese. He is someone you can talk to."

"Hai. I'll come." But again, the joy he was used to seeing on her face -- Kaoru had always been _happy _-- did not reach her eyes.

-----------------

"I've never been on a horse!" Kaoru protested, as he led her to the stable. He _would _snap her out of the funk she was in, he'd decided, and he rather had an idea that she would _like _horses.

To his surprise, he felt the buzz of Immortals as he approached. Chiyoko and Marshall were just riding into the stable -- Chiyoko was mounted on a horse he'd never seen before, a flashy bay gelding with two white socks in front. She dismounted in a twinkling and said excitedly, "We saw deer!"

"Two bucks and eight does," Marshall confirmed, sliding off at a more sedate pace. "Chiyoko's horse spooked, but she stayed on."

Kenshin grinned. "Maybe we'll see deer, too," he told Kaoru.

"I hope my horse doesn't spook!" Kaoru said, with a nervous giggle.

Kenshin asked, "Marshall-san, which of Jessica's horses would you recommend for Kaoru? Jessica said we could take any of them out, and to talk to her stable boy to have a pair saddled up, but I believe you may know them better than the boy does."

Some of the horses had returned from Japan with him; the equine population at the manor had roughly doubled overnight. It was Marshall who was the true horse aficionado, not Jessica.

Marshall nodded. "Take my grey here for Kaoru," he reached up and patted the gelding on the neck. "We were only out for an hour. He's good for miles more yet. For you -- you do ride?"

Kenshin smiled. "Oro! It's been decades. But yes, I used to, when I was in the army. It was often the fastest way to get from point to point, or to make a rapid escape after ..." he trailed off. "However, I would like a calm horse _also_. Getting thrown off hurts, that it does."

Marshall snorted a laugh of apparent agreement. "Even for us, yes. -- Very well, the liver bay gelding in the fourth stall would be good for you. Don't ride him too hard, as he's getting a bit long in the teeth, but if you're just going out for a hack, he'll do. He's mine and you can take him out whenever you want -- just tell me, so I know about it. I don't want to overwork him, and I do like to ride the old boy myself occasionally."

"We're just riding into town to see Darius, that we are." Kenshin paused, "And thank you, for the loan of the horse."

Marshall nodded absently. "Chiyoko mentioned you'd met Darius. He's one of the good guys, as far as Immortals go -- there's few enough of us who are."

--------------


	57. Chapter 57

-----------------

"School." Chiyoko said, scornfully. "I don't need school."

Marshall leaned against the wall, watching her brush crusted mud from the bright bay gelding's butt. She glanced over at him when he didn't response to her complaint, then turned back to grooming the horse.

"I've got a whole head full of knowledge," she said. "I can read, write, do arithmetic. Other things. Why do I need _school _now?" She ran the boar-bristle brush in her hand down the horse's flank. The horse twitched and snapped a back foot up in protest. She slapped him impatiently. "Quit!"

He put the foot down and blinked at her mildly, looking back at her.

"He's ticklish," Marshall observed. "-- And you're going to live centuries, Chi-chan. You ought to take full advantage of every chance for education that you get. A good education will make your life more comfortable." He grinned. "You could go to university. I'd pay for it."

She made a skeptical noise. "I am _not _a scholar."

"You could be. You've all the time in the world to learn. Most of us at least develop a few scholarly hobbies."

She frowned. "Maybe."

"Hey. You're special to me. I'd like to see you succeed. Eh?" He walked over to her, and ran a hand over her shoulder-length hair. "I wouldn't suggest it if I didn't think you could do it."

"I'd rather stay with you," she frowned up at him.

He glanced towards the open stable door, and apparently concluded that the odds of getting caught were too high, because he didn't move to kiss her. She thought he wanted to. Instead, he patted the horse on the rump. "So what do you think of this boy?"

"He's fun," Chiyoko said. "He's a lot more energetic than that warmblood you had in Japan."

"I thought he would suit you. He's all yours."

"Mine?" she squeaked.

He nodded, and scratched the gelding just above his tail head. The horse leaned into his fingers, enjoying the scritch. "Every little girl should have a pretty pony of her own."

She scowled ferociously. "I am _not _a little girl!"

"You're cute when you glare like that," he pointed out, with friendly amusement. "And the horse is yours for as long as you live here, Chi-chan. He's an Arab; his father and mother were both imported from Egypt. A friend of mine bred him. His grandfather was owned by an Arab prince."

"Thank you," she breathed, belatedly, and leaped up to hug him. He caught her, and gave her a very chaste hug -- but when he set her down, he added with a smirk, "I figured out how to keep Kenshin from sensing when we're together."

"Yeah?"

"If he takes that old gelding of mine out for a ride, he'll tell me where he's going and I'll know how long he's going to be gone." He sounded proud of himself.

She contemplated that. It felt wrong to deceive Kenshin. But it was also very logical. Kenshin was downright psychic even without his abilities to sense their locations.

"I just worry about Kenshin's reaction if he finds out about us," Marshall said, frowning. "I'd rather he not find out."

He was right. Kenshin would be furiously angry. He simply wouldn't understand, she thought -- this was _Kenshin_, who'd probably been a virgin when he married Kaoru.

"How long are we going to keep the secret from everyone?" Chiyoko said, suddenly feeling awful inside. She hated the deception and the lying and the sneaking around. Marshall was romantic and treated her exactly like she always wanted to be treated -- witness the horse; witness the morning they'd spent on the shore of a lake, earlier, a long ride from town. But sometimes, it just felt _wrong_.

"I don't know. Kenshin would have my head if he ever found out about this. -- Don't tell anyone the horse is yours, either," he said, then pursed his lips for a moment. "I guess it's our special secret, for now, you and me."

"Okay," she said, reluctantly. Then the horse reached around and caught her sleeve in his lips and tugged, wanting attention. She reached up and scratched his withers and the horse leaned into her hand and flapped his lips ecstatically.

Marshall chuckled. "He's a bit of a clown, I think."

"What's his name, anyway?"

"What do you want to call him? He's got some big fancy name that doesn't suit him."

"Prince," she said.

"Prince. Good name."

---------------

"Kenshin?"

Kenshin was seated crosslegged on the grass in the garden, writing a letter home. It was an absolutely gorgeous morning, but Shinya's voice tone did not match the sunny day.

He set aside the letter, ink, and brush, and the board he was using to write on, and said, "Yes, Shinya-kun?"

Shinya sank down to his knees beside Kenshin, bowed his head, and said, "I need to tell you something."

Kenshin regarded Shinya for a moment. Then he said, mildly, "If this is about you and Byron, I already know."

"Huh?" Shinya's look was priceless, Kenshin decided. In that instant he looked very much like his father when Kenshin had discovered Yahiko having a tryst at the river with Tsubame.

"Your bed squeaks. I _am _sleeping in the next room."

"Um." Shinya was turning an interesting shade of scarlet.

Kenshin said mildly, "At first I thought it might be you and Chiyoko, but Byron has a very distinctive way of walking, that he does. I heard him leave, later."

"Why didn't you try to ... break it up?" Shinya said, incredulously.

Kenshin gave him a wholly innocent smile. "Break what up?"

"Heh." Shinya said, shaking his head. "My father would have had my _hide_."

"I am not your father, that I am not. And one might note that it is easier to have a secret tryst when you are sleeping on a futon versus a bed, that it is." He chewed on the end of his brush for a moment. "You might meet in Byron's room in the future; this one notes that it is at the end of the hall, where the noise you make is less likely to disturb people. This one would rather not be awoken by squeaking beds. It is somewhat distracting when one is trying to get a good night's sleep."

"Kenshin!" Shinya laughed, a helpless giggle that made him sound many years younger than his age. "Aren't you going to lecture me about -- I don't know ..."

Kenshin gently said, "Lecture you for what reason? This one worrys about you, Shinya, that I do, but critical words will not stop you from following your heart. I do not believe the two of you will have an easy path -- but it may well be worthwhile. For both of you. However, promise me you will take care and not get caught by anyone outside the family while you're here in England. And -- I thank you for coming to tell me about this, rather than trying to keep it a secret, that I do."

"Thank you. I _promise _we'll be careful," Shinya said. He paused, then added, "He's ... well, I've only known him a few weeks, but I can't imagine life without him."

"Hnnh. I know the feeling." Kenshin said, very seriously. "I was intrigued by Kaoru within a few moments of meeting her. I fell in love with her within the first two days, that I did. When given an opening to leave, I simple could not bring myself to do so." He paused, then added somewhat introspectively, "In retrospect, this one probably waited far too long to _tell _her he loved her." He added ruefully, "And I managed to make a total disaster of my proclamation of undying love and leave her in tears when I did finally try to tell her."

"What?" Shinya said, with an incredulous laugh. "You made Kaoru cry when you told her you loved her?"

"More or less." Kenshin grinned. It was funny now. "This one is often an idiot when it comes to affairs of the heart -- at least, my own affairs. Other people are much easier to understand than oneself."

"_That _is the truth," Shinya growled.

"Aa. And then, after I made her so upset, I proposed to her, a few moments later. I had to find her first, you see." He gave Shinya a blindingly bright rurouni smile. "And she said yes, that she did."

---------------------

William was a whiner and a coward. Kenji idly entertained fantasies of introducing Hiko to his youngest brother then casually walking away and leaving them alone together. If he gave Hiko about, oh, a week, tops, William would no longer whine. Hiko had ways of dealing with superfluous complaints. Alas, Hiko and his mountain were half a world away. But it was certainly an amusing thought.

He owed Hiko a letter. And Misao, as well.

Kenji picked at his breakfast, shoving fried eggs around on the plate. There was very little else he found funny here. He now fully understood why his grandfather had seized on him with such desperate hope. _And _why Viscount Trevor didn't want to leave his brothers and cousin alone in the house.

Apparently, Jeffrey the secretary had quit in a huff the week before. William, and a temper tantrum, had been the final bit of straw that had broken the man.

He glanced at his William, almost unwillingly. Kenji was trying very hard to find something to like about the man, and not succeeding. He was a mostly appalling person, Kenji thought.

William took this glance as an opening to say, "Are you _sure _you don't want to go into town with us?"

__

Into town meant brothel crawling. Jessica would have his hide. And if his fiancé didn't flay him alive, his _mother _would take a bokken to his backside. His father's reaction didn't even bear contemplating; Kenshin's disapproval was worse than any pain Kaoru could inflict.

Besides that, he failed to see the attraction in visiting disease-ridden prostitutes. _Eww_. In two months' time he'd have Jessica in his bed -- he was more than willing to wait. The anticipation was glorious and he had absolutely no desire to spoil that day by sampling the goods of some anonymous whore.

"I get married in two months, that I do," he said, knowing he sounded a good bit like his father in that instant. Kenshin had started the weird _that I do _thing in English, perhaps as a substitute for his beloved _de gozarus _in Japanese. _That I do_ was oddly infectious.

"All the more reason to have a little fun now, while you still can," William grinned, displaying a whole mouthful of rotten teeth. It made Kenji's mouth hurt just looking at it. And William's breath was horrible, Kenji could smell it across the table. Mockingly, he added, "That you should."

"No, thank you." He tried valiantly to be polite, and thought he mostly succeeded. "I am flattered by offer, however."

William's lips twisted from smile to sneer. "You think you're better than us, don't you? Stupid little nancy boy. You shoulda been a priest or something."

Kenji lifted an eyebrow, but didn't deign to respond to that since he couldn't come up with a single thing to say that wouldn't escalate the matter. _Kaoru would have had me over her knee_, he thought, _for a comment like that meant in earnest._

George appeared at that moment. He was at least _cleaner _than William; he had on a freshly washed outfit, and appeared to have bathed in the last few days. Kenji said, "Good morning, George."

"Tell me again why you're here?" George said, without looking at him. The man walked across the dining room and flopped in a chair next to his brother. A maid appeared a second later with his breakfast on a tray.

"This is cold," George sneered at the food before the maid even set the tray down in front of him. "Go have the cook make new."

Kenji lifted a staying hand to the maid, because he knew the cook was already working on lunch. They'd received word that several of Viscount Trevor's business associates were coming up for a picnic on his land later; the cook would be serving them lunch. "You were late. I sent Toby," Toby was an engaging little boy who belonged to the butler, "up to wake you two hours ago. You did say you wanted to be wakened for breakfast."

"My head hurt."

Kenji lifted an eyebrow at him. The liqueur cabinet was locked and he had the key in his pocket, but he assumed that both brothers had their own private stashes of booze. Headache likely equaled hangover. Viscount Trevor gave each of them a weekly allowance that would have supported the dojo for a year -- or provided an ample supply of alcohol for a pair of drunkards.

Trevor had given _him _a purse of coins as well; he was going to buy a wedding gift for Jessica with it.

The maid stood uncertainly, clutching the tray of food in both hands, her gaze flicking from one man to the other. She reminded him of a sighthound -- long face, narrow-set eyes, gangly limb, and far too thin. She was young, and still growing -- so perhaps a greyhound _puppy_.

"Meg, go ahead and put that down," Kenji said. "He'll eat it or he won't. It's none of your concern."

She flashed him a grin, relieved to have a clear order. Quickly, she placed the tray in front of William, who glared at Kenji across the table.

Kenji ignored him. He smiled at the maid. "Will you ask the cook to come see me in my grandfather's office in about an hour? Then come back; I've an errand I'd like you to run."

"Yes sir," she said, and hurried out. By the speed of her departure, he guessed that she was glad to be out of the company of his siblings.

"I'd love to have a toss with her," William stared after her.

"She's barely thirteen years. Touch her, I cut your balls off," Kenji assured him, cheerfully, but inwardly, he was repulsed.

"She'd probably go for it," George said, with a shrug. He picked at his plate of cold food. "All those village girls hope to have an affair with one of us. It doesn't seem to hurt their marriage prospects much, and it isn't a bad job; I make 'em enjoy it, and the financial rewards are much to their liking, I think."

Kenji closed his eyes briefly. "Don't touch _that _one, at least. She's a sweet kid."

"Oh-hoh! Want her for yourself, do you?" William crowed. "I knew you had to have a few flaws, somewhere. Father Kenji has a few sins, it turns out!"

"Shut up." Kenji glared. "I _have _a fiancé, and you've met her ..."

"So has half the peerage." William snickered.

"At least she had good enough taste not to sleep with you," Kenji shot at him, needled. He was well aware that Jessica wasn't a virgin. He didn't care all that much -- while he would have preferred to be her first, perhaps it would be a good thing that _one _of them had a little experience in the bedroom. Because he sure as hell didn't. Anyway, what she'd done in her wild youth -- and apparently it had been a _very _wild youth -- was in the past. He was only concerned about their future.

"George, listen to him! He's so mean." William pouted.

"Ah, you had it coming, you little sniveler," Basil said, walking in through the doorway. The maid -- her name was Meg -- trailed after, a tray of food for him in her hands. He said, sounding far more alert than Kenji's brothers, "G'morning, Lord Alastair. I trust these two useless little bastards haven't been making too much trouble."

_Suck-up_, thought Kenji. "There is no trouble here," he said, politely, despite his strong and lasting desire to punch Basil in the face.

"I see two examples of trouble," Basil said, with a grin, "right in front of me."

"Hey!" William protested.

George glared.

Kenji closed his eyes again. On the surface, the comment was fairly similar to something he'd say to Shinya or his younger siblings -- err, his younger Japanese siblings. He was having a bit of a hard time seeing William and George as brothers. Perhaps he was in denial.

Behind that comment had been malice.

And, also, a bit of truth.

It had to have hurt -- he couldn't imagine saying something like that to Shinya, or one of the kids, knowing it would cause pain. It was wrong, it was harmful, and he simply couldn't comprehend why he'd _want _to.

Kenji contemplated the problem of Basil's insults for a moment. Then, with quiet dignity, he said, "People live up to your expectations, Basil. If your expectations involve problems, they'll often deliver them."

"What are you, some sort of wise man?" Basil snorted.

He scratched his nose. "No, but I've taught kendo and martial arts to children since I was no more than a child myself. You learn a bit, watching students."

"Hnnh," Basil said.

"I'm going up to grandfather's office." He grinned at his brothers, briefly, and was rewarded by a continuation of George's earlier dirty look, and an expression of simple confusion from William. "Meg!"

She reappeared from the hallway, an earnest expression on her face. Well, somebody liked him. "Meg, would you listen for the party from London? When they get here, have someone come get me."

---------------------


	58. Chapter 58

Laughter echoed through the halls.

Kenshin listed absently; outside, it was pouring rain. Inside, it sounded as if a herd of elephants were stampeding through the house. The elephants were having a very good time; the herd appeared to be composed of most of his family.

A small child ran past the library door -- light quick footsteps. That would be Yukio. The boy was followed by two heavier children -- Iku and Aki. After them, with a roar like a lion, came Byron, cane clicking on the floor. "I'm going to _get you_!"

The children squealed and scampered up the stairs to the third floor.

"I got you!" _That _was Shinya, and by Byron's yell of surprise, he'd just been ambushed.

"Get him!" Jessica's yell of glee echoed through the house. "Get him, kids!"

Byron howled with helpless giggles -- by the sound of things, he was being tickled shamelessly by the children, likely with Shinya and Jessica joining in. Kenshin smiled, listening to the games. He almost looked forward to rainy days; the children were a joy to listen to and watch.

"You should join them, Chi-chan," he said, giving her a concerned look. She was sprawled out on her stomach on the library carpet, nose in a book. She had shown no interest earlier in joining the games, and had retreated into the quiet sanctuary of the library when the roughhousing had begun.

Outside, he could hear Yukio counting in English. Jessica ran past the door, giggling, and saying, "This way, By-kun!"

__

Hide and seek, he guessed. And somewhere along the line, in the last month, Byron had become By-kun to every female in the house, including the servants -- though the servants called him _Lord _By-kun. He was responding to the endearments with gleeful enthusiasm.

Chiyoko took a minute before answering him. Her response was a grumpy, "Marshall says they're too noisy."

He glanced up from the letter to Yahiko he was writing. "And this one thinks Marshall is unduly critical of children at play. And adults, who have not forgotten how to play as well."

"Aaaaah! You found me!" -- Byron's voice, a bright tenor, was clearly audible, as was Yukio's shout of glee. Byron crowed, "I'm it!"

"We hafta find the rest of them first!" Yukio exclaimed.

Chiyoko snorted. "It's undignified, Kenshin-papa."

"It's _fun_, Chiyoko."

"Then why aren't you playing?" She shot back at him, sounding needled and cranky.

"Good question." The letter could wait. He swished the brush clean in a little bowl of water, set it down on the tray with a click, and stood up. His knees popped; he'd been sitting down for far too long. "I think I'm going to go join them. Coming?"

"Kenshin, wait," she rolled over and tucked her knees to her chest. "I -- I just don't feel like playing today. Okay?"

He was halfway to the door, but he paused, and turned back, and said softly, "Is something bothering you, Chi-chan?"

He asked because he knew something was -- he'd known it for weeks. She'd been upset since the night of the party. He had thought it was simply sorrow caused by Shinya's rather clumsy rejection of her advances. Shinya had good reasons, but Chiyoko was young, and lonely, and that alone would explain her mood. If she needed to talk, he'd listen. Perhaps she was ready, now.

"No ... yes." She blinked up at him, brown eyes large and scared. "If I did something you didn't approve of, if I _really _disappointed you, what would you do?"

"Have you done something I should know about, Chi-chan?" he asked.

She wouldn't meet his eyes. "What would you do?"

"It depends on what you did," he answered, honestly. He sat down next to her, crossing his legs.

She stared down at her hands, saying not a word. He wondered what she'd done -- or thought she'd done. Likely, it wasn't nearly as bad as she was perceiving it to be. She was young, he thought, and hadn't developed much of a perspective on life yet.

"You know that I loved Hiko like a father, correct? I owe him my life, and he tried so hard to make a good man of me." Kenshin said. "When I was a boy, when I decided to fight and kill for what I believed was right -- it was against his wishes. I disappointed him terribly, Chiyoko. I defied his requests. He considered me a fool, and he was very, very angry."

"He's not a very nice man," she said, somewhat uncertainly.

He grinned. "Hiko has his moments, both good and bad. -- I thought, when I was about your age, that he would never speak to me again. I'd gone against everything he taught me. But in the end, he forgave me, and he trusted me to do the right thing, and we respect each other now. I think he's proud of me, though he'd never admit to it."

"And your point is?"

"My point is that no matter how much you disappoint someone, Chi-chan, if they love you, they'll forgive you in the end."

"Kenshin?"

"Aa?"

"Thank you."

"Do you want to tell me what you think you've done that is so terrible, now?"

Silence, from her. She shook her head, after a moment, and said, "I ... can't. I promised someone else."

"Ahh. So this is someone _else's _secret." He hesitated, considering the problem. "Is anyone being actively hurt by it?"

"No ..." She sounded uncertain. "It's an honor thing, I guess."

"Is the other person someone you love and trust?" Kenshin wondered what she was talking about. A love affair, perhaps, and that was a disturbing thought. Who among the Kenshin-gumi would do that, and with whom? He knew about Shinya and Byron -- and while he didn't exactly approve, his concerns were more practical. He was worried that Shinya might be hurt or charged with a crime because of his relationship with Byron.

And Chiyoko had to know he knew, because she'd been at his side a few times when he'd alluded to the relationship between them. The whole house had guessed by now, in truth -- Shinya could keep what the English called a poker face fairly well; his mother's influence was strong, there. But Byron wasn't quite so good at concealing his feelings, and he had a tendency to beam at Shinya whenever the two were together and on safe ground.

In public, Byron was just sullen and angry. Given the comments that they'd overheard thrown his way in town, even when he was with them, the sullenness wasn't an act either. Though there had been fewer comments of late; Byron had been carrying himself with more dignity, and between himself, Shinya, and Kenji, they'd managed to discourage the worst of the offenders.

Chiyoko nodded in response to his question but said nothing to shed light on his sudden concerns. If not an affair, what was she talking about?

"Then keep their secret, Chi-chan," he smiled at her, though inside he was now troubled. She didn't smile back, and for a moment, he thought she was going to tell him anyway. But she didn't -- she just sat there, looking very unhappy. "And -- Chi-chan, I love you as a daughter. You would find it very difficult to do anything so terrible that I could not find it in me to forgive you."

She smiled, somewhat weakly. "Thank you, Kenshin-papa."

"Mmm. Now, I believe that I'm going to join the fun." He rose, trying for nonchalant unconcern, and he thought, mostly succeeding.

-----------------

Kaoru let herself into his bedroom somewhere past midnight. He lifted the covers up and she slid in next to him; her skin was cold, and her clothing smelled of the night.

"You were outside?"

"Just on the terrace," she said, snuggling up against him. "Just thinking. Remembering home. Kenshin, we haven't heard from Yahiko or Megumi and I'm starting to worry."

"Mail is slow from Japan," he said, running a hand down her side. The calluses on his fingers were rough against the fabric of her nightclothes. He was forever amazed that he was allowed to _touch _her -- even after more than two decades of marriage, there was still an element of wonder there. He loved the feel of that nightgown -- it was silk, warm, soft and feminine. Kaoru smelled of Western style perfumed soaps -- she'd had a bath that evening, in the new bath house that, none too soon, had just been completed. Her hair was still just a little damp and it was heavy and cool when he stroked it.

"Yahiko was sick," she said, quietly, her voice a low murmur of grave concern.

"Aa. I know. I believe it was one reason he asked me to bring Shinya along, that it was." Kenshin shrugged out of the coarser fabric of his sleeping yukata and wrapped his arms around her. The silk flowed against his skin, and beneath it, he could feel Kaoru's curves. She was more curvy and less muscular these days -- she was getting far less exercise. After a moment, he added, "Shinya is so sensitive, and he worries so much about the people he loves. Yahiko doesn't want Shinya to watch him, if ..."

Kenshin swallowed hard, unwilling to voice his own fears. Instead, he asked quietly, "If word comes that he is truly ill, do you wish to go home to him?"

She was silent for a very long time. "My children here ..." she sounded desperately torn.

"He has Megumi and Tsubame and his daughters," Kenshin said, very low. He tightened his grip on her. "It is a contagious disease, what we both fear. You would risk contracting it, and bringing it back to them."

She sighed bitterly into his chest. "I hate it here."

Those words, again. He tightened his grip on her. "I am so sorry that you are unhappy, Kaoru."

Despite his urging, she had only gone to meet Darius once and had not come with him again. She would not go horseback riding with him again, either; she said she was afraid of falling off and leaving her children without a mother. He had asked her, repeatedly, to run with him in the morning, when he and Chiyoko, and often Kenji and Shinya went out for a jog and she always found an excuse to avoid it.

She rolled away, suddenly, tearing herself from his arms. He thought she was going to flee the room, but she only lay with her back to him, curled up in a little ball. "Kaoru?"

"I love you so much," she said, "and I hate you."

Words wouldn't come to him to respond to that. He was silent, propped up on his elbow, for more than a minute, furiously trying to think of an answer that would ease this grief in her heart. None would come, and finally she said, "You don't know what to say to that, do you, Kenshin?"

"No," he said, sitting up the rest of the way. He reached out and turned the lamp up that was burning low on the bedside table. "No, this one doesn't."

"There's no hatred in your heart." She sat up too, and tucked her knees to her chest, and frowned at him. Then she looked away. "There never has been. Even when you were a hitokiri, you killed out of a desire to help the living, not out of hatred for the dead."

"Kaoru, what is wrong with you?" He asked, insistently, urgently. She was lashing out at him -- even bringing his past up was a way of hurting him. More than once, she'd said his past didn't matter. In fact, it had been one of the first things she'd ever said to him, and it had been a theme throughout their lives together. She rarely mentioned his past. It just wasn't relevant to their present.

For her to bring up the Battousai ... something was simply very _wrong_.

She shook her head slowly, biting her lip and saying nothing. He could have dealt with anger, or bitter grief, but she just looked numb and desolate. He tried to reach for her, and she pulled away, rolling to her feet.

"I'm going back to bed. I never should have come in here."

"Kaoru," he said, trying for humor. "I'm your _husband_. If you don't come to me, I'm going to come to you."

"Don't. Just leave me alone." She almost ran out of the room.

Kenshin didn't sleep much the rest of that night. Something was wrong with Kaoru, and he didn't know how to fix it.


	59. Chapter 59

The building had been a warehouse, once, and then a factory making cloth. The factor had closed, the agent explained, because it had needed more space. Now the large brick structure held nothing but dust and mice and the three of them: Kenshin, Jessica, and the tweedy little man who'd been hired to sell the old structure.

Kenshin stood in the middle of the echoing, cavernous space. For a dojo, it was perfect -- there would be room here aplenty. It had twice the floor space of their dojo in Tokyo, and lots of light from high windows on the walls.

"You could rent this out," Jessica said, behind him. "In the evenings. As a meeting hall or for large gatherings. It has a loft where you could store tables and chairs. Maybe you could have an indoor market here, in the winter, on the weekends. It's a beautiful old building. It has a lot of potential."

"How much is it?" He asked the seller's agent.

The man quoted a price that, to his pleasure, was within reach. Jessica had pledged to match Kaoru's money for the sale of the land in Tokyo; that would cover this purchase. _Jessica _agreed that they might have a viable business here, and she was expecting a return on her investment.

Jessica snorted, and said, "Try again."

The man lowered the price by a thousand pounds.

She lifted an eyebrow. "There's that old dancehall over on Elm Street, you know ..."

He dropped the price again.

She offered two thousand less than _that _price.

Kenshin winced at the aggressive tone that her dickering was taking, but it worked. After a few more moments of debate, they'd settled on a much lower price.

Aftewards, Jessica said, "That's a very good deal on the building alone. It's a decent investment; it should appreciate. This town is growing in size, and it's well located right in the heart of everything."

He nodded. "We'll talk to Kaoru, but I know she misses teaching."

------------------

Getting out of bed was too much effort.

Getting out of bed meant getting dressed, and then finding something to eat, and likely sorting out the argument between Iku and Aki that had been raging for the last thirty minutes.

Kenji's bellow shook the house. He'd just lost patience with the two of them. Kenji's had a large, but not inexhaustible amount of tolerance for stupidity. Iku had been teasing her younger brother somewhat mercilessly since morning. "Aki! Go to your room. Iku! My study! Now!"

Well, her son would resolve it. Kenji, veteran of years of training children at kendo, had absolutely no problem with meting out appropriate discipline to his younger siblings in her stead. He was actually better at getting them to mind than she was -- the kids had a tendency to argue with her. She didn't need to get involved.

There was absolutely no reason she could think of to get out of bed.

Kenshin was going to be upset to find she hadn't even risen. Academically, she knew that once upon a time, Kenshin's opinion mattered more to her than almost anything else in the world. Guiltily, she thought that it still should. He loved her.

But she didn't care.

__

Maybe, she thought, _I don't love him anymore_.

Gods. It was a terrible thought and it made her want to go back to sleep and maybe never wake up. She owed so much to Kenshin ... there was no reason _why _she shouldn't love him anymore.

__

Chiyoko, she thought. Jealousy flared, inasmuch as she had the energy for jealousy.

__

No. I don't care. If I don't love him, she thought savagely, _at least he'll have her in a few years. They're perfect for each other. She's got the talent I never had, and something indefinable that made Kenshin take her as his student. She's a better fit for Kenshin than I ever will be. And she's Immortal. They'll have each other forever._

"Kaoru?" His voice, outside her door.

She said, "I have a headache, Kenshin."

The door opened. She heard his footsteps on the floor, light and measured. The bed dipped. A concerned hand rested on her back through the comforter she had yanked over her head. He didn't say anything for a long moment. Then, "Get up, Kaoru."

"Leave me alone."

"Get up." He pulled the covers back. The sunlight streaming through her bedroom window was blinding.

"My heard hurts."

"You're lying. It's not your head that hurts." He knew her too well, she thought.

"Just leave me alone, Kenshin. I don't want to get up."

"It's almost dinner time," he said. "Either you get up and out of this bed, or I will physically carry you down to the table. In your nightgown."

"Damn you."

The hand withdrew. "Kaoru, I know this mood."

She didn't have the energy to argue with him. "I'm getting up."

"Good." He didn't move, though. He was waiting for her to get dressed.

"Get out. I'll be down in a minute."

"I'm your husband," he said, with what sounded like mild censor. "I do not need to leave the room for you to get dressed."

"If the servants knew ..."

"It's Bessie's day off and the rest of the staff is busy making dinner."

"Damn you." She sat up, unaccountably angry. When she glared at him, she met amethyst eyes that held only grave concern. He reached callused fingers out and stroked her jaw, a fleeting touch.

"Kaoru," his normally light, almost feminine voice had dropped an octave with worry, "I _know this mood_. You must fight it. If you love me, you will fight it."

"I'm not sure I do anymore."

What impulse made her say that, she wasn't sure. She might as well have slapped him. He flinched and stared at her with wounded pain, eyes gone wide and liquid. "Kaoru ... no, Kaoru ..."

She knew that the grief in his eyes should have torn her apart. But she felt nothing except numbness.

He rose, walked to the window, and stood there with his head bowed. She stared at his back, noting his ponytail was getting ratty at the ends again. It needed a trim. The last time he'd handed her a pair of scissors and knelt and asked her to neaten the ends had been in Tokyo.

Tokyo.

Gods. She just wanted to go back to Tokyo. To the world where she ran a dojo, and where Sanosuke was a living presence in their lives. To a world where she was happy, the mother of a pack of wonderful children, and where she loved the man whose heart she knew she had just shattered.

"I'm sorry," he said, finally.

He was _apologizing_?

She wanted him to rage at her, to throw things, to go golden-eyed with betrayed anger. Instead, he was apologizing. "I'm sorry, Kaoru," he repeated.

"Damn you," she repeated.

"Kaoru, this is my fault." He stood with his back straight, staring out the window. "Sano's death is my fault, purely because of who I am. Leaving Japan ... is my fault, and I know you never wanted to come here. We should have gone to Kyoto. You would have been able to see Megumi and Yahiko occasionally, or they could have come to visit us, and I'm sure Aoshi and Misao would have been willing to help us start a new dojo. It would have been a good life."

"You believed this would be safer."

"Hai. And I still do. But sometimes, the safest course is not the best choice. In trying to keep you safe ... maybe I have lost you forever."

Suddenly, he rushed past her, shoving the door open with his hand, and hurrying down the hall.

"Kenshin!" She called after him, but he didn't stop.

She sat down on the bed. "Oh, Gods, what have I done?"

__

Go after him, a little voice urged.

She just couldn't summon the energy. Besides, as upset as he was, finding him might be impossible -- Kenshin, upset, tended to be Kenshin, the wanderer. Gods only knew where he was going to end up.

----------------

Marshall looked up at the tap on the frame of his open study door. Kenshin stood there -- a Kenshin with eyes gone dark and unreadable. He'd felt Kenshin's buzz, but had assumed that Kenshin was just walking past his office. The man made a point of speaking to him as little as possible.

"Yes?"

"I need to go out for a bit. Do you mind if I borrow your gelding?"

"Feel free. How long will you be gone?"

Kenshin frowned. "I just need to go out ... I wouldn't expect me back until morning. I'll be kind to the horse, I won't go faster than a trot."

"You don't weigh enough to bother that old boy anyway," Marshall waved away Kenshin's concerns. "I like seeing you ride him -- you've a good seat, and it's no work for him to carry someone as small as you."

"He's a good horse. I just --" Kenshin sighed. "I had a fight with Kaoru, Marshall. I need to go out, clear my head and think things throught. I'll be back sometime tomorrow."

"Is Kaoru alright?" he asked, truly concerned. Kenshin and Kaoru, fighting, seemed almost impossible. Kenshin looked terrible, too -- there was something unutterably bleak in the expression on his face.

"No." Kenshin said. "No, she's not. I -- I need to get away a bit, before I say some unforgivable things to her, that I do."

"I'm sure it will work out," Marshall said. "You two love each other."

"One would hope," Kenshin said, somewhat cryptically. He exhaled sharply. "Thank you for the loan of your horse, Marshall-san."

He turned around and walked slowly off. Marshall leaned back in his chair to watch Kenshin disappear down the hall -- the other Immortal was moving with a heavy stride.

Marshall shook his head. Kenshin's loyalty to Kaoru was beyond reproach; surely, everything between them would work out.

__

He's going to be gone all night ... Marshall realized, belatedly. A slow smile touched his lips.


	60. Chapter 60

Chapter 60

--------------

"Shh, Chiyoko," Marshall murmured, clapping his hand over her mouth when her giggles threatened to escalate beyond soundless snickers.

"I can't believe we're doing this!" She said, when he released her. "Gods, what if we get caught?"

"By who? Nobody's going to come out to the stables this late at night." He pushed the door open with his shoulder, and then offered her his hand and guided her inside.

She giggled again, and he hissed at her, "Shhhh!"

"This way," he climbed the ladder to the loft, where she discovered he'd already brought up both a blanket and a bottle of wine, which was chilling in a bucket of cold well water.

She sneezed at the dust and settled herself onto the blanket. He lit a lamp, and turned it very low. "We don't want anyone to see the light from outside."

"Marshall ... we're going to have to tell Kenshin," she said, quietly, staring down at her hands. "He'll forgive us."

"He'll have my _head_," Marshall snorted. "You're his little girl, Chi-chan. I know you're not a child, but I think he sees you as a daughter more than anything else."

"So?" She tucked her knees to her chest and regarded him over the top of them. In the dim light, she couldn't see his expression. "It's Kenshin. He won't take your head, Marshall. It'd be embarrassing, but wouldn't it be worth it not to have to sneak around anymore?"

"You are a naive little fool," Marshall said.

Stung, she recoiled. "Hey!"

Savagely, he slammed his fist into the floorboards. "I never should have let you talk me into this, Chiyoko. You're a very bad girl, and horrible for me. -- Kenshin might forgive _you_, but Jessica would never forgive _me_. And Kenji and Shinya -- or Kaoru -- would have my head if Kenshin didn't take it."

"Oh." She hadn't thought much past Kenshin's reaction. He was right about Jessica.

Sounding miserable, he said, "My fate's in your hands, woman. If you tell ... Jessica would kick my ass out. I'm not even really family to her, not by blood." He heaved a sigh. "If I'd had any wits at all I never would have come to talk to you, but I love you, Chiyoko ... I care. And now look where I am."

"I won't tell," she said, unhappily.

"You sure?" He ran a hand over his face. "I'd understand if you did, you know. Or we could break this off entirely ..."

"No!" She said, hastily.

"I do love you," he said, softly. "Maybe someday ... four or five years from now, when you're older ... maybe then. We can pretend it's something new between us then. Until then, however, we have to be so careful."

"Would you marry me, someday in the future?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I would."

"Okay." She nodded. At least there was that -- a promise of legitimacy, of no more guilt, someday far in the future.

"Hey." He reached into his pocket. "This is for you. It belonged to my last wife -- she died of a fever, about five years ago."

"I can't ..." she tried to wave the gift away, not even knowing what it was. It felt weird to accept something that belonged to a woman in his past. But he reached past her hands and dropped a necklace over her head. It had a pendent on it -- she held it up to the light from the lamp. A sparkly stone; she couldn't tell what type, in the dark.

"It's an amethyst." She saw a brief flash of teeth. "I want you to have it. Wear it under your shirt, Chiyoko, so nobody sees it. You don't want them realizing it's from me -- people might get suspicious."

She tucked it under her blouse; the setting was rough against her skin. Then she sneezed again, because of the dust.

He laughed. "Bless you. -- Chiyoko, I do love you. Don't ever doubt that."

-------------

Kenshin sat easily in the saddle with the old gelding on a loose rein. Despite the late hour and the strange rider on his back, the horse was relaxed. He moved out at a steady, calm walk, ears flicking around at the night noises. Nothing had bothered him -- not even a barn owl that had launched out of a ditch practically under the horse's nose.

The moonlit road stretched out before him, deserted and silent. The moon was full; it hung above the horizon, round and fat. Clouds scudded across it. A frog croaked somewhere close. Mosquitoes buzzed, and he slapped at them. A buck deer whistled -- it was late summer, and the rut would be starting soon.

"Beautiful night," he told the horse.

The horse tipped an ear back in response to his words.

"You're a good boy." He reached down and patted the horse on the shoulder. The gelding was a beautiful animal -- though he was older, perhaps twenty by the teeth that Kenshin had seen when the horse had snatched the bit out of the palm of Kenshin's hand -- he was still healthy. A stout, athletic beast the color of mahogany, with lighter dapples, he'd seen a lot, wasn't bothered by much, and he was too lazy to make any real trouble.

"Wish I'd had a horse like you when I wandered." He leaned down farther and scratched the horse's neck.

He was still bent over when the man appeared in the road. One moment the horse was walking down an empty road. The next, there was a figure in the way.

Tall. Lean. Short rumpled dark hair swept up and back by a bandanna -- in the moonlight, it was hard to tell, but he thought it was a red bandanna. Kenshin looked up as his horse stopped short. He was so shocked he didn't even straighten up. It absolutely couldn't be, but it looked like Sanosuke.

Deja vu struck acutely, for a moment -- then the man grinned, a devilish expression of vast amusement. He raised his arms high in the air and said, "Ooga booga!"

The horse went rigid with terror. It snorted. Kenshin froze, knowing any movement might make the gelding explode.

"Damn it ... ooooga booga boooooga!" The figure waved his arms in the air and ran at the horse.

The horse shifted its weight, and Kenshin sensed it had decided to bolt. He started to sit up, but before he could, the horse spun hard about. He was bomb proof but, apparently, not specter proof -- particularly when the ghost in question was deliberately trying to spook him!

Off balance, Kenshin went forward over the horse's neck when the horse swapped ends. He flung his arms out to stop his fall, but there was a savage yank -- his hand was caught in the reins.

__

This is going to hurt ... he was headed for the ground head first.

And impact. And darkness.


	61. Chapter 61

He was warm, and nothing hurt -- not the scars that ached in the mornings nor his wounded heart. He was at peace, and he knew he was loved.

"Hey, Kenshin," Sanosuke stood, looking amused, a few feet from him. Brown eyes twinkled with mischief. "You shoulda seen your face. Ooga booga booga!"

"Am I dead?" He had to be. It was the only explanation.

"Yup. You landed on your head and broke your neck."

"Sano, _why_?" He rubbed the back of his neck, which didn't hurt, but the thought of _broken neck _made his skin crawl. He trusted, by Sano's casual reaction, he would not wake paralyzed.

"Needed to have a chat with you." Sanosuke jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "She asked me to get you here. We both have a few words for you."

He looked past Sanosuke ... and stared.

A smile played around her lips. It was a smile he hadn't seen in decades, not even in his dreams. "Hello, Kenshin."

"To..." he couldn't even speak for a long moment. "Tomoe ..."

She stepped forward, looking almost shy. An enigmatic smile played around her lips for a moment before she reached him. He folded his arms around her, and pulled her close, and just held her. "Tomoe. I'm so sorry ..."

"Hush." She pulled him close. "You've made me proud, Kenshin."

"I ..." tears sprang to his eyes. He was falling backwards through time, memories unreeling in reverse, taking him back to that life so long ago. He had been the Hitokiri Battousai -- and a teenage boy with incredible pain and grief in his heart -- and this woman had changed his world. Urgently, he told her, "Tomoe, I lived for you. I _lived for you. _If not for you, I would not be who I am. I am so very sorry that ..."

"Hush. What was done, was done. And you have a lot more living to do, Kenshin! You said you would live, and live you shall!" She laughed, a musical peal at the irony of his promise to her.

He didn't want to let go of her. He could smell the scent of white plums, her delicate perfume. He held her close, and for a moment, he was a fifteen year old boy unexpectedly in love. There had been no joy in his life until he'd met her. No affection. No simple pleasures. She had shown him how to love another, and how to _live _-- she had taught him that he was more than just a killing machine with no emotions, no _heart_. Because of her he had learned to laugh and to play and, for a few brief and wonderful months, he had been both husband and the boy he had never been allowed to be before, all at once.

This woman had made him who he was today. It was that simple. And she had given him hope for a bright future.

"Kaoru needs you," she said, releasing him.

"I ..." He closed his eyes. He stood alone, bereft. _Now _his heart hurt with the knowledge that he would have to leave this happy place. "You don't mind, about Kaoru?"

She smiled sweetly. "I've been born again, and lived, and died since we were husband and wife. I've gone on to love again as well. And it is possible to love greatly more than once in a lifetime, Kenshin."

"Oh." It had been thirty five years. She had died young, then, again. "I'm glad you found someone."

"Hai. And children, that time. My eldest is married herself, now. And I will live yet again, and again. Such is my fate. Our paths will cross, Kenshin. Watch for me. When we meet again, I will not know you except perhaps as an impression of familiarity -- but you will recognize me, if you trust your heart to tell you who I am."

He blinked at that. "Truly?"

"Truly. There are people whose lives are fated to intersect with yours, my love, over and over again. You will never be alone." Her eyes twinkled. "I've seen the threads of fate that twist around you, Kenshin. Your very long life is tangled with the fates of many others."

"I ... am glad to know that." A bad thought crossed his mind. "Enemies too?"

Her laughter was a merry peal of rich amusement. "Perhaps, though you must define enemy first ... And I much prefer Himura Kenshin's methods of dealing with bad men than the tactics of the Hitokiri Battousai. I am most impressed by the man you have become Kenshin. You have become a greater man than I could ever have imagined." She sobered, and said very seriously, "I thank you for the way you responded to Enishi, by the way. I would not have blamed you if you had slain him, after the pain he inflicted on you, and on Kaoru. It would not have been unjustified. He was hurting so very much."

"I don't kill."

"Mm. No. You love, instead. It's who and what you are, now." She bowed her head. "Do you want to know what happened to Enishi?"

"I have wondered, yes."

"He married. He had seven children; six of them live. One is a teacher. Another is a doctor. One is a mother of her own, with a newborn infant. He's a grandfather now." Tomoe smiled at him, gently, approvingly. She reached a hand out and brushed the scar on his cheek with her thumb, fingers resting along his jawbone for just a second.

Sanosuke commented ironically, "Y'know, Kenshin, you have remarkable taste in women."

He blinked, jerked his head around, and said, "Sano ..."

Sanosuke walked over to him and folded him into a hug as well. "Sorry I couldn't be there at your side. And, uh, sorry about dumping you on your head."

Kenshin snorted. The memory of Sano's ghost, running at his horse and making scary noises, would make for a fine tale -- he couldn't wait to tell his friends and family about _this _instance of Sano's humor. It would be funny, later; hell, it was funny now. But with mock irritation, he asked, "You couldn't come to me in a dream?"

"Nah. This was more fun."

"Next time you want to talk," Kenshin growled, into Sano's shoulder, "Just _tell _me. Haunt my bedroom, leave a message on my mirror, rattle some chains and pace the floor until I realize you're there. Or just materialize before me. If you can't manage a discussion with me alive, I'll slit my damn wrists."

"You always were a masochist." Sano clapped him on the shoulder with an amused laugh. "But my time here draws short. I've another destiny to fulfill."

"Will we meet again?" He sobered.

"Maybe." Sano smiled at him, and glanced at Tomoe. "Watch for me, my wanderer friend."

"Sano ..."

"Don't apologize for what happened. I always knew I was going to die in a fight someday. I guess I'm just glad it happened in something that was worthwhile. And it _was _worthwhile. They were going to light fire to the house with your family in it. I heard 'em talking.." He dipped his head, and rested one hand on the back of his neck and looked both embarrassed and very pleased as he said, "But I appreciate the promise you made to me, about Raiko. You may live to regret it, in a few centuries, but I do appreciate it."

"I'm sorry I couldn't stay in Japan ..." Kenshin sighed. He was worried about Megumi and Raiko; Yahiko was looking out for them, but it wasn't the same as if he was there.

"Ah, Megumi misses you, Kenshin, but she'll be okay. She doesn't need you just yet. And I wish you could see Raiko -- she's sitting up and crawling now. She keeps Megumi on her toes 'cause she's quite a handful, as we figured she would be. And she sees me, you know." He scratched his chin and grinned.

"So you watch over her?" He felt better about leaving them, knowing that Sanosuke was keeping an eye out for his daughter and wife.

"I will, until I have to move on myself." He tilted his head. "You saw me when I spooked that horse, didn't you?"

"Aa."

"You always were an uncanny bastard." Sanosuke's words were fond.

"Most Immortals are," Tomoe added, quietly. "They have been touched by death and turned back from it and that must affect your heart and soul."

Kenshin said, somewhat uncomfortably, "I'm just a man."

"-- Who's carrying on a conversation with the ghosts of his best friend and his long-ago lover." Sanosuke pointed out, staring at a point over Kenshin's head. He started whistling.

"This is not," Kenshin said, matching Sanosuke's banter with a bright, innocent smile, "the strangest thing that's ever happened to me."

"True." Sano scratched his head. "Though it has to rank in the top ten."

"So," Kenshin said, because he could feel a certain pull that was growing strong and stronger. His time was limited now. He could sense it. "What message do you have to pass on to me?"

The two of them exchanged a look -- one of mutual understanding. He was not surprised that Sano and Tomoe, who had never met in life, were united in the afterlife. The two had something in common: him! Tomoe said, "You need to go back to the house, Kenshin. There's trouble afoot tonight."

"What sort of trouble?"

Tomoe's smile was vague, and for a moment, he thought they were going to be supernatural and mysterious and make him figure it out by himself. But where Tomoe likely would have made him start guessing, Sanosuke vented an exasperated snort. "Chiyoko. Marshall. Illicit affair. If I was still alive, I'd castrate him for you and turn her over my knee and blister her behind on general principles. She's not an innocent party to the whole mess."

"... _what_?" Horror flooded him.

Sanosuke said sourly, "You're too late to protect her honor, but you need to get home as quickly as possible anyway. We don't know what happens tonight -- only that it's not good. The threads of your destiny truly are tangled tonight, but perhaps some things can be salvaged. You're good at the heroic stuff."

At Kenshin's shocked look, Sano said, irritably, "What, you thought he wouldn't make advances on her?"

"No, I expected it." Guilt replaced the horror. He stared up at the pair of them, stricken with absolute disgust at himself, for not foreseeing this. He had expected Marshall to be a learning experience for Chiyoko, a lesson in not trusting smooth-talking men. Chiyoko was well raised and his student -- he'd expected she would rebuff an advance from Marshall with indignation. He said, somewhat defensively, "I also believed she would give him the beating he richly deserved if he pushed the point beyond a 'no' from her. Chiyoko is fighting on a level very close to my own skills, these days."

"Never underestimate the romantic stupidity of young girls," Tomoe said, with a somewhat sour smile. "I was one, once. I can attest to the truth of that."

"Go." Sano said, "Go. And beat the crap out of that bastard for me."

And then ... he sucked breath into aching lungs. The night air was cool on his skin. His clothes were damp with dew, and when he sat up, the moon had moved a good bit higher in the sky. Frogs chirped in the ditch beside the road.

The gelding was gone.

__

Shit.

He rolled to his feet -- his neck went _crunch_ and spasmed as he did -- and burst into a run for home. Panic rose in his heart. His family was in danger.

"Thank you!" he called into the night, to the shades of friends who were still looking out for him.

There was no answer but he knew they heard.


	62. Chapter 62

The squeal of an angry horse woke Basil from a sound sleep. He sat up and listened: again, a squeal, and then a bellow. A crash that sounded like horse heels on a wooden door followed. And then the full scale screaming of a horse fight shattered the night air.

He rolled to his feet and yanked his trousers on over his nightgown. Something was upsetting the horses. Basil hurried down the stairs, outside, and to the stable. Others were rising -- he saw lamps lighting upstairs as the servants rose. Both William's and George's windows remained dark; he suspected that they were still in town and probably wouldn't be home until dawn.

__

Wastrels, he thought, contemptuously.

He was the first person to reach the stableyard. A strange horse was there, fighting savagely over a half-door with Trevor's favorite stallion. The moonlight revealed only a dark form.

"Get back!" Basil grabbed a manure shovel up from inside the stable door and dealt the strange horse a smart blow on the rump. It shied sideways, and flashed heels at him, then darted across the stableyard.

He expected it to bolt. Only reflex made him yell, "WOAH!"

The horse froze in place, all four feet comically hitting the ground together. It stood there, quivering, head held high, shaking like it expected to be hit again.

"What the hell ..." He cautiously set the shovel down and walked over. The horse snorted at him but didn't move. "You're a well trained bugger," he reached up and caught the trailing reins.

"What's going on?" One of the gardeners said, sounding half asleep.

"Somebody was thrown, I do believe." The horse had a saddle and bridle on, but as there was no sign of a rider, and the animal was dripping with sweat. It had either suffered a bad fright or run a long way or both. "Get me a light."

A lantern was produced in short order. He held it up, frowning. The horse -- a gelding -- was a nice animal, and was calming down, trusting in the humans that had captured him. The tack was also nice -- he held the lantern up to the saddle and saw the word _Marshall _on a brass plate on pommel.

"What time did Lord Alastair leave here?" He said, suddenly alarmed, to the people gathering in the stableyard. Several servants had now shown up. He had no idea what horse the man had ridden over on, only that he had a vague memory of him commenting that it was easier on the servants to ride a horse than to use a carriage.

"Before dinner, sir. He said that he was worried about his mother." That was Meg.

"Mm." He held the lantern up and inspected the horse for a moment. The animal did not appear to be injured. Still, Alastair could have either fallen off -- he rode like a sack of potatoes -- or run into foul play. Brigands, or worse.

And without Alastair, William would inherit. All things considered, Basil would far rather see Alastair the heir to Viscount Trevor's fortune -- Alastair was far less likely to waste the money on drink, women, and parties, and Basil had quite a bit of money of his own invested in Trevor's enterprises. _Damn_.

He thrust the gelding's reins into Meg's hands, then turned to one of the stable hands, who had been lamentably slow to rise. "Go tack up my mare. I'm going to ride over to the Marshalls' and see if Alastair made it home safely."

-------------------

Marshall had consumed most of the bottle of wine himself; his breath reeked of it. Chiyoko, however, had no desire to repeat Kenshin's "hangover cure" in the morning and so had limited herself to one glass.

"Sweetie," his arms were around her, and he murmured drunkenly in her ear, "'m'love w' you ... c'mon, wanna m'love to you again ..."

"No," she protested, because the last time had _hurt_. He'd pinned her down underneath him, and he was twice her weight. She thought her ribs were going to crack, mashed between his weight and the hard floor. And it had hurt down _there _too -- he'd been rough and she thought she'd enjoyed it a lot more, the first time. He'd been more sober to start, and she, less. "No, I need to go to bed."

"M'bed with me now."

He pushed her shoulders towards the floor again, clearly intending to make a second go of it. She thought he'd meant _you're in bed with me now_ but she wasn't entirely sure.

"No!" She pushed at his chest. "You're drunk, Marshall!"

He pressed his lips on hers and tipped the both of them over. His elbow landed in her gut and he shoved a knee between her legs. "B'good for you this time ... m'nother chance. Sorry, I was in a hurry ... yer so pretty ..."

"NO! Marshall, stop!" She didn't want to hurt him, fighting him off.

----------------------

The Marshall manorhouse was dark. It was late -- perhaps two or three hours until dawn.

Basil held the reins of both his mare and the wayward gelding -- they were making nasty faces at each other but not actively trying to kill each other -- and he pounded on the front door. "Anyone up?"

After several moments, a lamp lit inside. "Who's there?" A male voice, through the door.

"Sir Basil! Alastair's cousin!"

The door cracked open, and Jessica's butler peered out. Behind him, he could see -- to his relief -- Alastair, descending the stairs, nightgown flapping around his calves. "Sir Basil. What's wrong?" Alastair asked. The butler moved aside, letting Alastair slip out the door.

"Is this one of your horses? It's got a saddle with Jessica's surname on it. I thought you might have been thrown on the road."

The butler held the lamp up, and both of them peered at the gelding. The butler said, "Mr. Kamiya rode out of here on that horse, at dusk."

"Damnit! He must have been thrown." Alastair spun about and ran back inside. Over his shoulder he shouted,. "I'll go get dressed. Meet me in the stable, will you? We'll go out looking."

-----------------

The stable was dark, and silent. Basil tied both horses up to a rail in front of the door, and was just about to try to figure out which stall belonged to the gelding since no servants had appeared when a woman exclaimed, "NO!"

A man said, drunkenly, "Ch'ko, 's okay. I won' hurt you."

"Let GO of me!"

The argument was coming from inside the stable. Concerned, Basil followed the sound. He climbed the ladder to the loft as the argument continued -- above, a dim lamp lit two people.

A girl. A _child_. Naked. She couldn't be older than ten or eleven, he thought, judging by her size. She was a tiny thing, really.

And ... a man.

A man pinning the girl down in a very compromising position. He was twice the girl's size; all he could see of the little girl was two legs sticking out on either side of the man's waist, and her arms flailing in the air over his back.

It was a man he _knew_.

A man who had done this _before_, to another child, long ago.

Marshall! He hadn't even known Marshall was back in town.

With a roar of outrage, Basil lunged across the stable loft. "LET GO OF HER!"

Marshall uttered a startled oath. So did the child. He didn't care. He drew his pistol. He'd quite simply had enough and the man really did need to die.

"You will _never _touch another innocent!"

-------------------

Chiyoko heard a bellow of fury, "Marshall!"

Frantically, she tried to get free without hurting Marshall. He was out of his mind drunk -- likely, he wasn't even going to remember this in the morning. _Idiot_, she thought, with vexed disgust at him. She could have gotten loose at any time even had he been sober -- the trick was doing it without damage to him.

"You will never touch another innocent!" The voice shouted.

Marshall, slowed by drink, finally rolled off the top of her. He lay on his back, dick waving in the air for all to see, and stared stupidly at the man who ...

... had a gun ...

... aimed at Marshall.

Chiyoko reacted without even thinking. She didn't recognize the man. He was threatening Marshall.

"I'm going to kill you, you son of a bitch!"

__

No he's not ...

She grabbed her wakizashi up off the ground and leaped just as the gun fired. The ball tore into her shoulder with an impact like the kick of a horse. It spun her around hard.

Training took over, action replacing thought.

She _kept _spinning, a full three hundred and sixty degrees. She found her center of balance. Crouched, hands on the hilt of her sword and the scabbard, and then launched forward, whipping the wakazashi forward out faster than the eye could follow. The gun cracked again, deafeningly loud in the confines of the stable loft. But the bullet was aimed where she was no longer standing.

Training.

Months of training.

Training that had become instinct.

__

If you're in a life or death situation, Kenshin had told her, _Don't hesitate. Go for the kill. Other Immortals will come back from the dead, and you'll have time to get away._

Training. Training to kill.

Motor memory took over. One hard, lightning fast slash to the ribs that cut through bone and gristle as easily as she could chop a log in two. It was pure, complete instinct. _Stop the threat. Don't think, just strike._

Blood sprayed over her as her momentum carried her past the attacker. She slid to a halt, bare feet finding little purchase at that speed on the smooth wooden boards of the loft floor. Sword in hand, she turned to attack again ...

... the man crumpled ...

... the gun hit the ground with a thud ...

... she realized belatedly that he was mortal ...

"Chiyoko!" Kenshin's horrified gasp, behind her.

She turned again. Her heart was racing. She couldn't think. She stared at him stupidly. Where had he come from?

He stared back, amethyst eyes horrified. "What ... what is going on here?"

"He was going to shoot Marshall." Her voice sounded small in her ears, like the words of a little girl. "I had to stop him."

"What happened here?" Kenji appeared at the top of the ladder.

"Marshall," Kenshin said, voice switching from horror to something ... terrible ... an emotion she couldn't even identity ... "Marshall is _Immortal_."

"Father? What's going on?" Kenji stared at the bloodied ruin of the man on the floor. Then, "Basil! Oh, gods, Basil! I just ... five minutes ago, I just ... told him to meet me here."

"Marshall is _Immortal_," Kenshin said, his words damning her as the truth dawned on both of them. He repeated slowly, "Marshall is _Immortal_."

__

Marshall is Immortal, she thought, mind suddenly hiccuping into motion. A slug from a gun would not have killed him. She'd just slain a man ... and Marshall's life had never been in danger.

"Chiyoko, it's okay ..." Marshall said. He snagged the blanket up off the ground and yanked it around his waist. "You reacted on instinct."

"No." Kenshin said, eyes now cold and implacable. "No, it's _not _okay. Kenji. Kenji!"

Kenji looked up, slowly. His eyes flicked over her. In a numb voice, he said, "Chiyoko, you're naked."

"Kenji!" Kenshin's voice cracked like a whip. "Look at me!"

Kenji snapped his attention to Kenshin, looking up from where he was crouched beside Basil. "Yes, father?"

"Go wake Shinya and Jessica. Have Shinya ride into town for the police. Send Jessica up here."

Kenji didn't rise. He just sat there, crouched on his heels, staring stupidly at his father with his mouth hanging open.

"We don't need to involve Jessica ..." Marshall said.

Kenshin's eyes were coldly amber when he fixed them on Marshall. Marshall shut his mouth, for a moment, then said, "Police? Kenshin, we need to hide this. Chiyoko ..."

"Chiyoko, get dressed." Kenshin said, turning his back on her.

"Kenshin ..."

"Get. Dressed."

Kenji hadn't moved. Kenshin's voice was softer when he said to his son, "Kenji, he's dead. He was dead before he hit the ground. I'm sorry."

"He pulled a gun on me!" Marshall's words were loud and slurred in the otherwise silent loft -- though Chiyoko thought he sounded a hell of a lot more sober than he had a second ago.

"He also said he wouldn't let you hurt another innocent." Kenshin ran a hand over his face. "Chiyoko, get dressed and go up to your room. I will be there later."

She didn't even think to argue. Kenshin's tone of voice was terrible -- she'd never heard him speak so flatly, without any warmth or affection or humor.

---------------

Marshall stared at Kenshin, after Chiyoko had fled the room almost at a run. Kenshin stared back without blinking. Marshall realized he was still very drunk; that thought held terror. Sober, he would have no chance at defeating Kenshin in a fight. Drunk ... well, he wasn't so drunk as to think he _could _win. But he wouldn't even have a chance at escaping. He'd been a lot drunker a moment earlier, before adrenalin had flooded his veins.

He stammered, sounding still blotto even to his own ears, "I had n-no idea that would happen ... he pulled a gun on me and I didn't even sh-see her move."

Kenshin's voice was deadly serious. "I am very tempted to take your head, Marshall. _Never _have I found more justification for breaking my vow never to kill again."

"Oh, come on, Kenshin. I didn't kill that man!" _Try for denial_, he thought.

"That _man _is my _cousin_." Kenji hissed, finally standing up. Both his knees cracked. The noise was almost as loud as the gunshots against the silence of the night.

"Who pulled a gun on me!" Marshall insisted.

"Chiyoko's actions are a separate issue." Kenshin was _scary, _Marshall thought. Those eyes glittered amber in the lamplight from beneath those long red bangs. He was coiled up with tension, ready to strike with potentially deadly violence. If Kenshin attacked, Marshall realized, he would have no chance to reach his sword -- which was across the room, laying in a growing pool of blood from Basil. Not that he could win. He'd seen Kenshin practice often enough to know the man could beat him blindfolded.

"Look, she was willing. She begged _me_," he said, pleadingly.

"Don't try it," Kenshin's hand was resting on his sword. "The pretty words won't work on me. You are nearly a century old and she is fifteen. Your having sex with my foster daughter is beyond inappropriate."

"But ..."

"Be that as it may," Kenshin said, "you could not have touched her without her allowing it."

"That's right!" Maybe Kenshin wasn't going to kill him ...

"But," Kenshin was still fixing him in a cold amber-eyed stare. "You attempted to force yourself on me, before you ever knew me -- you only saw the pretty feminine-looking boy in your drunken stupidity, not the man who was _not _interested."

"Father?" Kenji said, in apparent dismay. "He didn't!" A heartbeat, a pause, then Kenji said, "How drunk was he that time?"

Kenshin flicked his gaze at Kenji, but didn't respond to him beyond that.

"How many others, Marshall?" Kenshin demanded.

"Never ...!"

"Basil," Kenshin glanced at the corpse on the floor, "Basil said he wouldn't let you hurt another innocent. Was _he _the innocent he spoke of?"

"No!" Marshall denied. _How had he known_? Marshall's thoughts chased each other in circles. _Basil was never going to tell. He knew it would disgrace him as much as it disgraced me! How did he ..._

"He was about thirty-five, I think. He would have been fifteen, when you last lived here." Kenshin's tone was deadly cold.

"He was willing!" Marshall snapped, then shut his mouth, realizing he'd just damned himself.

"Obviously, he didn't feel that way, given that he was ready to _kill _you." Kenshin's tone had turned scathing. "It explains a great deal I had wondered about. Kenji -- the reason Basil has been so savage to Byron was that he was afraid Byron would turn out like ..." Kenshin flicked those horrible golden eyes towards Marshall, "...Marshall. A predator."

Kenji barked an incredulous laugh that held no humor. "Byron? He would never hurt anyone!"

"Yes. Well. Basil was ... damaged ... as a boy. By this man." Kenshin ran a hand over his face, again. He sounded tired. "I honestly do not know what to do here, though taking your head is actually an option I am considering, Marshall. Give me a good reason why I shouldn't."

"Because you have vowed never to kill!" Marshall's voice sounded panicky even to his own ears. "You ..."

There was absolutely _no _humor in Kenshin's voice when he said, "And this may be a time when it would be appropriate to break it."

"Father," Kenji said, "No. Don't kill him."

"Give me a good reason why not!" Kenshin's voice rose an anger, cracking high and furious. His hand was still resting on the hilt of his sword.

"Because if you do," Kaoru's voice rang out, behind all of them, "the Kenshin I love will die as well."

He spun about, startled.

She stood at the top of the ladder, a bokken clutched in one hand. "Kenshin, you _do not kill_. You are not the Battousai any more. Justice is not yours to mete out; let the law deal with Marshall. Vengeance is not justice, and for you, killing him would simply be vengeance."

Kenshin bowed his head. It seemed to take a great deal of effort, and it was a moment longer before the gold bled from his eyes to be replaced with flat lavender. "Aa. You are right, that you are."

She paused, then added, "Chiyoko told me what happened. Let the law deal with _both _of them."

"Aa. I'll send Shinya into town to get the police, that I will." Kenshin headed for the ladder, moving like an old arthritic man. "Kaoru ..." he started to say something, then shook his head, and climbed down from the loft and disappeared out of the stable.

Marshall realized, belatedly, that he was alone in the loft with Kaoru and Kenji. Without even thinking about it, he lunged for his sword ...

... Kenji reached it first, snatched it up, grabbed the sheath in one hand, the hilt in the other, and whipped the sword out and into Marshall's gut before he could leap away. Marshall clapped a hand over his bowels as they started to spill out. Unbearable pain surged through him; he screamed. Blood poured over his hands. Darkness clouded his eyes.

The last thing he heard was Kaoru saying, darkly, "You aimed low, Kenji. You should have taken his head."

"I don't kill either," Kenji responded, "Though I agree with Father ... I am very tempted to make an exception to that belief in this bastard's case."

... oblivion ...

... death ...

-------------------


	63. Chapter 63

Chapter 63

------------

Byron's fingers danced across the piano keys with desperate intensity, playing a wild, elaborate composition -- only a man with height and his matching fingerspan could have played like that, and only one hurting almost beyond measure could have thrown that much emotion into the music.

Shinya stood off to the side of him, unsure what to say or do. He could see tear tracks down Byron's cheeks. Could see his shoulders shaking, though he couldn't hear any sobs over the noise from the piano. He heard mistake after mistake -- tangled notes, keys struck together. Byron would stop for a heartbeat and then begin banging his grief out again. He was crying with the music as much as with his eyes.

Finally, after many minutes, Byron slammed his fist into the keys. The piano made a tremendous crashing noise; it took it long moments to fade away, and Byron stayed silent until the library was utterly quiet.

"He was the closest thing I ever had to a father."

Byron's voice was hoarse. Shinya said nothing.

"He'd be taking a belt to my backside for bawling like this."

Shinya stepped closer, rested a hand on Byron's shoulder, and said, "You loved him anyway."

Byron nodded miserably. Words tumbling together with haste, he stammered out, "T-there were good times, Shinya, there were good times, too. It wasn't all beatings! All you people saw was the end, but you never saw the good times."

Shinya sat down on the piano bench next to him. "I'm sorry."

"I never wanted to see him, ever again." Byron stared upward, tears rolling freely down his face. "I wished him dead many times in my life. I am so very glad to live here, with you, Shinya, and with your family. But ... but he was my cousin, and my family, and in some twisted way, he loved me. And now he's dead."

"The police came, hour ago. They arrested both. Chiyoko and Marshall both." Those words left a bitterly angry taste in his mouth. It didn't seem right that Chiyoko had been arrested.

Shinya's first impulse, when Kenji had woke him and told him of the night's events, was that Chiyoko needed to flee. Kenshin had said very shortly, "She committed a crime. She needs to face the consequences."

And he had stood, with eyes a flat, expressionless lavender, staring coldly at Chiyoko while she had -- with equal grimness -- told the police exactly what had happened. And then she'd burst into tears. And begged them not to arrest her. And cried that she didn't want to leave her family. And sobbed for Kenshin to stop them from taking her away.

Shinya had expected Kenshin to go to her, to comfort her.

Instead, Kenshin had turned his back and walked away while the police had put her in irons. He had said not a word. Shinya, who had known Kenshin all his life, had been utterly shocked. He would never expected such utter ... coldness ... from Kenshin.

Marshall had been taken away in the same wagon as Chiyoko -- he had also been silent, but he had stared at Kenshin and Kenji with visible anger in his eyes. He had said nothing to the police, nothing to Kenshin, nothing to Jessica. Jessica had cried, and wanted to know _Why _-- why had he betrayed her trust with Chiyoko? Chiyoko was a little girl, she'd screamed at him, as he pulled out. _How could he!_

"She'll hang." Byron said, his voice bringing Shinya back to the present. "She shouldn't have confessed. She'll hang. She killed a fucking _peer_. Basil's father is the second son of a baron. He has connections. Chiyoko is going to _hang_, Shinya."

__

Better for her to hang than to be thrown into jail for decades, Shinya thought. But Byron didn't know that. And Shinya couldn't tell him -- that was Kenshin's decision, and he hadn't yet brought it up. Given that Kenshin was in a rather terrifying mood at the moment, Shinya certainly wasn't about to broach the subject now.

Byron rested a hand on his knee for a moment. "Shinya, I'm sorry. I know she's your friend. And ... damnit, do you get the feeling that the one person who is most guilty in this whole affair -- that'd be Marshall -- is the most likely to get away with the least amount of punishment?"

He continued, voice nearly strangled with anger. "The age of consent is sixteen here in England, so he can be charged with rape. But ... he'll only be sentenced to jail for a few years, at most, and all they might do is give him is a fine. It hardly seems fair! It's not fair!"

"Not fair." Shinya echoed. None of this seemed _fair_. Nothing had been _fair _for far too long.

----------------

Kenshin was in the brand new bathhouse.

Kaoru hesitated at the door for a moment, then pushed it open and entered. She wasn't sure if she would be welcome -- aside from the cruel words she'd said to him, he'd been far closer today to the _Battousai _than she had seen in over twenty years. Shishio, she thought, was the last time he'd been so distant.

But ... she couldn't stay away.

He stood naked in the steamy interior, scrubbing at his skin ferociously with a rag. His hair hung wetly down his back -- out of the pony tail, heavy with water, it reached his waist. It didn't look nearly that long caught up in a tie. The scars on his back stood out lividly; the one that Shishio had left on his shoulder was a half-moon shaped indentation of wrinkled tissue. The one across his back that had nearly split him stem to stern -- well, maybe it really _had _killed him, rather than _almost _as they had once believed.

They were scars she knew; they were scars she had traced with her fingers and her tongue on long, languid nights. As familiar as her own body.

She knew he was aware of her presence, but he didn't acknowledge her. Instead, he kept scrubbing. Soap, hot water, a rag. Furious motions.

"Kenshin."

"Leave me."

"Leave you now or leave you forever?" she said, quietly, unsure of his meaning. They'd fought less than twenty four hours before -- a fight with few words, but still the worst disagreement of their life together. Because she'd said she didn't love him. She had hurt him deeply; had struck deep to the very core of his heart.

He froze in place. "Leave me for the moment, not forever!"

"Kenshin. Look at me."

He turned, slowly.

His eyes were ... frightening. They were dead of all emotion, as exhausted in appearance as she felt in her heart. She just wanted to go to _sleep_. She wanted this whole mess to go away; she wanted to wake up back in Japan, with the life she'd loved back.

"I love you, Kaoru," he said, suddenly, unexpectedly.

"I know."

He exhaled raggedly, and turned away again and said, "Kaoru, I know you did not truly mean the words you spoke to me, but you must realize how badly you hurt this one by stating them."

__

I am sorry didn't even seem adequate. She found she couldn't voice any words; there was a tremendous lump in her throat. Instead, she walked across the bathhouse and hesitated behind him for a moment before wrapping her arms around him. Naked, wet, she pulled him back against her Western-style dress. His dripping wet hair soaked through her clothes and she buried her face in the nape of his neck, smelling scented soap and _Kenshin_.

He leaned back against her. "You're getting all wet, that you are."

"It's okay." She found her voice. "Kenshin, I hurt ... I ... I never meant to hurt _you _..."

"You did mean to hurt me." He whispered. "It's why you said it."

She flinched. He was right.

He twisted around in her arms, facing her now, amethyst eyes gazing into her own. He kissed her on the forehead, after a moment, and wrapped his arms around her, and hugged her with joint-cracking strength. It was as if he didn't want to let her go. Very softly he said, "You are forgiven, Kaoru."

His words were unexpected. And they made her sob; she hadn't expected simple _forgiveness _-- not as easily as that. She hadn't even _asked _for it, or done anything to deserve it.

He continued, quietly, "Kaoru. Listen to me."

"I'm listening."

"I know this mood, this hurt, in your heart." He brushed his knuckles against her cheek. "This one has felt that way, many times. The despair can consume you whole, if you allow it."

"I just want to go home ..."

"This is our home, now." He held her close. The heat of his body soaked through her clothes, along with the water. "We will go back to Japan someday, but for now, we make our home here."

"Promise me we'll go ... back to Japan?"

"Aa. I promise you. And I promise myself, as well." In a tone of quiet confession, he admitted, "I miss our friends too, Kaoru. They are well, but ..."

"We haven't received word."

"_I _have received word." He sighed, releasing her.

"You got a letter? When?"

"Not a letter. A ... message. You may think me crazy, but that horse threw me, and I died. And both Tomoe and Sano came to me. They are well enough. I am not worried about our friends, overly much. I merely miss them."

"Oh." She stared at him. She wanted to ask more, but his tone indicated he didn't want to talk about it.

He dumped a bucket over his head to rinse off the last of the soap on his body, then wrung the water out of his hair and tossed the dripping red mass back over his shoulder. He then picked a towel up off the bench and began drying off. "Kaoru, I have failed Chiyoko, and badly."

"She's the one who murdered Basil."

"Aa. But I should have protected her from the situation. I should have ... I should have foreseen it. I knew that Marshall would likely proposition her at some point; he is the sort of man who likes _innocence_ -- who likes young teens who will worship him. It does not escape me that every single one of his wives was barely into their teens when he married them." He paused, as a bad thought occurred to them. "And four of the five died young, as well. The fifth had an affair and he divorced her. I asked Jessica about that; the girl is now married to a very wealthy merchant."

He snorted. "I also expected Chiyoko had more _intelligence _and would not be fooled by him. I expected she would rebuff him rudely and would learn a lesson about choosing one's friends carefully."

Kenshin stepped into his trousers, and then yanked a shirt over his head. Kaoru said quietly, "I would have expected the same out of her. He's a rather ... slimy ... old man."

He picked a comb up off the bench and dragged it through his damp hair. Kaoru winced at that; he was damaging his hair. She could _hear _the knots being torn out of that thick red mass. He was definitely in a _mood_.

"Let me." She held a hand out for the comb.

Wordlessly, he passed the comb to her and turned his back to her again. Kaoru gently began to work the tangles out.

After many long moments he spoke again, "Be that as it may, she _killed_, Kaoru. And she killed without reason, which disturbs me more. Even had Basil shot Marshall, Marshall would have recovered without incident."

"She reacted on instinct."

"She is very nearly a master of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu, Kaoru. She has more natural talent at many of the moves than _I _do, and she has learned it a great deal faster. Some of that is memories and instincts from the Immortal she slew -- but much of that is simply Chiyoko. And she is so very talented that she cannot _afford _to act on instinct. She is a living weapon -- she cannot afford to be a _loaded _weapon with no safety."

He blew a sharp breath out. "I saw her attack. She wasn't thinking, she just reacted. I fear I have made a very grave mistake in training her, that I have. I saw the little girl who I wanted to live. I did not see that the same little girl stops thinking and simply fights like an automaton when confronted with a dangerous situation. But I should have. It is how she killed that first Immortal. She felt no fear and no guilt -- she simply went for the kill."

Kaoru picked a snarl out of his hair with the tines of the comb and said, "So what now?"

"She must face the consequences of her crime. It is a _crime_ -- it is murder. And for an _oriental_," he spat the word out, "to kill an English knight ... well. They will execute her."

"Can't ..." she wanted to ask if they could find some way to defend her from that.

"No. I do not believe we should fight it. She is Immortal. Aside from my personal attachments to her, I do not wish for an Immortal girl to spend decades in prison. Someone will notice, questions will be raised, about why she does not age. That is not good for any of us. And, additionally, I do not especially want a student of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu to spend decades in prison and them emerge someday made hard and angry and vicious by the needs of survival in jail."

It was with black humor that he added, "I really don't want to have to _hunt _Chiyoko. Imprisonment ... changes people."

She sighed. "I ... am so sorry about this, Kenshin."

"Aa. So am I." He reached over his shoulder, handing her a leather tie, as she finished combing his hair out. She pulled it back, knotted the tie, then hugged him again.

Very quietly he said, "Let us go get something to eat -- it's almost time for tea. You have not eaten anything in at least a day, am I right?"

She didn't even ask how he had known -- she hadn't been hungry. She still wanted to go crawl back into bed, and she still wasn't very hungry.

He cupped his hand under her jaw and tipped her head up so she looked him in the eyes. "Kaoru. Everything else in your world may change, may be alien and foreign and grim -- but this one is always here. Do you understand me? You can rely on me, and you can trust that I will _always _be here, that I will. You will never lose this one. I will allow no one to take my head, and I cannot be killed any other way, and nothing short of death would cause me to leave you."

His eyes had warmed, a bit -- there was life in them again, just a flicker. For her. She knew it was because he loved her. And he had forgiven her.

She burst into tears, suddenly, unexpectedly.

"Kaoru!" He waved his hands in the air. "That's not the reaction I wanted from you!"

She cried hard, choking sobs. "I know ... I know ... it's just everything ... everything ..."

He hugged her, then, and held her, and the more he stroked her back and rocked her back and forth, the more tears came. She thought they would never end. She cried for Sano, and she cried for her lost home, and she cried for Chiyoko, and for Kenji's cousin, and she cried for herself.

And she cried for Kenshin, who would not cry himself -- but who, despite the grief etched in the lines of his own face at this very moment in time, had the strength and compassion to forgive her without even being asked. She loved him so.

He whispered quietly, "I love you, Kaoru. I always will."


	64. Chapter 64

It was a bitter December day. Kenshin stood alone, and grateful that he had persuaded the others to remain at the house. This would be ugly, and he they did not need to see it. He, who had seen and dealt far too much death in his life, felt nauseous in anticipation of what was to come, soon.

The scaffold was dark and wet from recent rain. The clouds overhead were low, scudding quickly overhead, blown by storm winds that promised more foul weather. He shivered in his overcoat, and his bangs whipped into his eyes. He brushed them back impatiently.

The rope spun and twisted in the gusting wind, a promise of what was to come.

He'd spoken to her twice over the last few months. Once shortly after she'd been arrested, in the company of her lawyer. He'd been allowed to see her again, after the sentence of death, a few days earlier.

The first time, despite the lawyer's presence, she had begged him to save her. To rescue her.

And he could have. He, a hitokiri of the Meiji era, would have found little difficulty in slipping silently into a London prison and escaping again with Chiyoko.

She had been terrified. Dirty. Hungry.

He had a family. Children. A wife. He could not do as she asked. If he were caught -- or even simply recognized -- it would destroy his life. And that was even if he wanted to help her, and he wasn't sure he did.

And she had killed. A murder of a man who had only meant to protect her. He had been _coming to her rescue_ and she had slain him. She had not stopped to think, to size the situation up and choose a correct course of action. She had cut him down with the efficiency of an automaton.

He was chilled by what he had created.

Never again, he vowed. _Never again _would he teach anyone the secrets of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu.

And yet ... she was Chiyoko. Her tears had torn him apart. She was a little girl, scared out of her mind. She said she'd seen one woman kill another in the prison, and another woman die of cholera. He wanted to save her. He wanted to soothe away her tears and take her home and call her his daughter once more.

Instead, he had bowed his head, and he had told her, very quietly, that he could not rescue her.

The second time had been different. She was thinner. Angrier. She'd been arrested in July, and it was December the second time he saw her. He'd barely recognized her, when they brought her out. She had stared at him with angry brown eyes, lips pinched, and she had said not a word when he greeted her.

"I am sorry," he had told her. "It will be over soon. You will have friends, waiting for you."

The guards, listening, had thought he was talking of the afterlife. Perhaps he was, at that -- Sanosuke might well meet her briefly on the other side. Or not. He didn't know.

She had averted her gaze, but he saw terror in her eyes. Well, they were going to kill her. And it was one thing to know academically you'd come back from the dead. It was quite another to test the theory. Particularly when you were only sixteen years old.

"Kenji and Jessica got married," he said, trying for small talk. He switched to Japanese. "Last month."

"Jessica was going to make me her maid of honor," Chiyoko had spoken, finally.

"Iku was."

"It was supposed to be _me_!" And she'd burst into tears.

"It was a small ceremony. Nobody felt like a big party, Chiyoko," he'd said, uncomfortably. Which was true enough, though the fact that Chiyoko's actions had made what should have been a grand celebration into a somber, hasty event grated on him. Jessica and Kenji had _deserved _a huge, fairy-tale wedding.

But the Trevors were mourning Basil. And Jessica was still deeply distraught over the whole affair -- she felt betrayed by Marshall, and distressed by Chiyoko's imprisonment. She had been quiet, sober, and very far from the mischievous and high-spirited young woman that Kenshin had come to consider part of his close family years ago.

Kenji, caught in the middle between the Trevors and Jessica, and torn by his own affection for Chiyoko, had spent long hours in his studio, painting. He showed no one his work. However, Kenshin, pursuing Yukio one day, had seen a painting in progress. It had been group portrait of Sanosuke and Megumi and Raiko, Kenshin and Kaoru, Yahiko and Tsubame and all their children. All of them had been sitting on the dojo's steps. It was a picture of happier times.

It had been a somber, sober wedding, put together quickly. He had encouraged them to make the ceremony happen with haste; he had privately thought both Jessica and Kenji needed the close comfort a lover could bring.

Still, he had good news to impart.

"Jessica's pregnant, at least three months gone." He had smiled slightly. "She's very excited."

"That was quick." She had been flatly disinterested. Jessica had likely conceived fairly close to the wedding day; this amused Kenshin -- and he was honestly looking forward to his first grandchild with unconcealed glee.

"I thought you would like to know."

She had shrugged slightly. "I'm more jealous, than anything else."

He had reached out and put a hand over hers. "Chiyoko, I'm sorry. I know this wasn't the life you envisioned for yourself."

She had risen, then, and told the watching guards, "Take me back. I'm done here."

Now, he stood alone in the prison square. Public executions were no longer practiced here, but they had let him be a witness. He watched, grimly, as she was carried out, slung over the shoulder of a guard. He noted both her hands and feet were bound and she was glassy-eyed with drug. Likely, they'd had to sedate her.

He wondered idly if she could take him in an honest fight. It was possible. She didn't know _all _the secrets of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu. She didn't have the upper body strength to do some of the moves that he found difficult himself. But she was quite possibly faster than he was. And where his body was battered, badly healed, broken and scarred, hers was and would forever remain, unmarked.

She cursed and kicked and struggled as they carried her up the steps, rousing from her drugged stupor. He wondered how many people had been required to restrain her. She was near hysterical with fear.

The noose was secured around her neck.

She started to scream. She thrashed, as they pulled it tight.

His stomach rolled.

The platform fell away.

She was silenced. She twitched, jerked, bound feet kicking. Her knees drew up, her back arched in death spasms. He'd seen men die before. He'd even seen prisoners hung before. He'd killed his share.

He was sick on the cobblestones of the prison square.

Then, after wiping his mouth, he went to collect the body.

The executioner was sporting a black eye and broken fingers. He said nothing -- simply stared at Kenshin for a moment, apparently dubious of Kenshin's strength, then he carried the body to the wagon that Kenshin had borrowed for this duty.

Kenshin wrapped her in a blanket and then climbed in, flicked the reins, and drove away. The horse was as subdued as he was.

She revived long before they reached the outskirts of town. He heard a sharp inhalation.

"Stay still." He said, a command.

Outside London, he found a farmer's driveway that was well concealed by a copse of trees. He pulled off the road and clambered into the back of the wagon, and pulled the blanket back. She blinked at him.

"That was quite the performance you put on," he said, shaking his head at her.

"I thought ... I ... they said sometimes prisoners lose their heads when hung." She was shivering. "I thought my head would come off!"

"That only happens when it's very large men," he informed her. He reached under the seat and handed her a satchel.

She opened it. He knew what it contained: clothing, money, and a ticket for a steamer to America, first class.

"America?" She stared at the ticket in stunned shock.

"You'll be recognized if you stay in England. The newspapers rather ... sensationalized ... the story." It had been a frenzy of bad reporting. The story of a Japanese girl who had slain an English knight had been tabloid fodder for months. These people loved a good juicy tale, and Chiyoko's story had all the right elements -- sex, murder, and scandal.

The exact date of Chiyoko's execution had not been publicly announced. That was the one thing that Jessica's money had done for her. A number of bribes had been needed, but he didn't think any of the tabloids had received word in advance. It would allow her to make her escape more easily.

"But I don't know anyone in England."

"That's rather the point, that it is." He shrugged. "There's five hundred pounds sterling in that bag. It's more than enough to start a new life in America. Jessica was very generous."

"But ... but I'll be alone ..."

"Hai." He shrugged. "You can't stay here, and I can't go with you. And -- you are no longer my student, Chiyoko. I did not teach you Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu for you to murder with it."

"You said you'd forgive me almost anything."

"Not this. You _killed_. Not in self defense against an Immortal, but rather, you murdered a mortal man. Who was trying to save you from a situation that _you _created."

"I love him."

"He does not love you. I suggest you keep that in mind. He has been released from jail; he was only sentenced to two week's imprisonment, and he disappeared the day that he was released." He had disappeared because Kenshin had informed him that he was seriously tempted to break his vow never to kill in Marshall's case, and that only Kenshin's very grudging respect for the law had prevented Kenshin from dealing out his own form of justice. Marshall had wisely taken the hint and made himself scarce.

"He loves me!"

Still, she did not believe. Did not see. He wanted to beat some sense into her. He wanted to hold her close and tell her she was loved by _him _as a daughter.

Instead, he left her standing beside the road, a few miles from London, and drove the wagon away.

It started to rain.

He wondered if he had done the right thing. He wasn't sure if he would ever know.


	65. Chapter 65

Years passed, until a decade had gone by before Kenshin even realized it.

------------

1904

------------

The machine looked like a very fine carriage, but with no traces for horses. It idled in front of the house, occasionally sputtering, and emitting clouds of thick smoke from an engine mounted behind the seats.

"Amazing," Kenshin said, gazing in wonder at the vehicle. He'd seen motorcars before -- in silent movies, and once from a distance while riding a horse to town. The horse had been less than thrilled, and he'd judged it best to _remain _at a distance. He'd never before been close enough to touch one.

The owner was a business associate of Jessica's -- a man named Dr. David Goldshmidt. He owned a factory that made fine music boxes; they had been talking about making phonograph players in the next few years, as well.

"It is a fine machine," Dr. Goldshmidt said, running a hand possessively over the motorcar's hood. "I was going to take the Lord and Lady into town; if they have no objections, would you like to come? My daughter speaks highly of you."

Kenshinwinced a strictly internal and silent wince. Dr. Goldshmidt's daughter, Margaret Goldshmidt, was one of Kaoru's students at the new dojo. The girl had been eying him with interest for over a year -- marital interest. Dr. Goldshmidt, who was cheerfully capitalistic and ever on the hunt for a new business deal, likely viewed Kenshin's close ties to the Lord and Lady Trevor as advantageous in a marriage for his fourth daughter.

The girl was pretty, but Kenshin was married, madly in love with his wife, and not the slightest bit interested. However, there was no way to tell the man the first two important points. The third ... well, he'd gotten quite adept at deflecting offers of marriage as Shinta Kamiya. He smiled brightly and said, "She's a lovely girl. She reminds me of my own sweetheart."

Which was, actually, true. Had Kenshin _not _been madly in love and married, Margaret might have been attracted his interest. Maybe. He wasn't sure; he truly didn't think of other women much -- Kaoru was his romantic world and other possibilities never really crossed his conscious thought.

Dr. Goldshmidt said, "You have a sweetheart?"

"Hai. I hope to return to Japan to be with her, someday." Which was also true. He just wasn't telling Dr. Goldshmidt the entire truth -- that Kaoru was living here now, with him.

"Well," Dr. Goldshmidt hedged, "My daughter still speaks highly of you."

"Hai. She is a nice woman." He studied the motorcar a moment longer. "I would certainly love to ride in it. It is an amazing machine."

"Well. Come along, then."

"Um." There was room for three people in the back seat, if two of them are small and skinny. "Do you mind if I invite Mrs. Kamiya? She'd love a ride even more than I would!"

And so he -- and Kaoru -- went for their very first motorcar ride -- it was noisy and bumpy and the motorcar broke down a mile from the manor on the return trip and they had to walk home. He never imagined, then, that he would someday own a series of motorcars of his own. It was just a fascinating toy.

---------------

1906

--------------

Kenshin frowned at the newspaper, puzzling out the English words.

Earthquake. San Francisco, United States. Thousands dead, hundreds of thousands without homes after a fire followed the quake.

Tokyo had its own share of earthquakes, and Tokyo houses were built of wood and paper. Kenshin winced with deep sympathy. Then he, and Jessica and Kenji all donated money to the charities which were picking up the pieces. What else could they do? It was so very far away.

-------------

A month after the Great San Francisco Earthquake, a letter came in the mail that was addressed to Shinya. It had a return address in California, and when Bessie handed it to Shinya, he yelped and nearly dropped it -- because it was from Chiyoko.

"Dearest Shinya,"

"I thought I would let you know that I am well, having survived the quake. Please see the enclosed newspaper clippings -- you know what I am, and you can draw your own conclusions about that really happened. I was concerned that you might see the story in papers in your area and be worried about me.

"Please believe that I am doing well. I miss all of you, and you have my address now, if you would like to correspond with me.

"I was to be married in a few months, but my soon-to-be husband perished in the same fire that I so 'miraculously' survived.

"I have found a new teacher here. I think you would like him; he was trained by a samurai two centuries ago, and though he is a white man, he has many beliefs about honor and integrity that I find most familiar. Please tell Kenshin that I miss him, and now that I've had a few years to think about it, I understand why he treated me as he did. Please tell him that I am sorry for all the trouble I caused.

"With Love,

"Chiyoko."

The letter included a snapshot of her sitting on a bluff overlooking the ocean. She looked healthy, with her hair grown longer, and her posture relaxed. The newspaper article concerned the 'miraculous' discovery of a girl alive in the rubble after a week.

"She could have written to _you,_" Shinya growled, handing the letter and photograph to Kenshin to read.

"Aa. But she won't." Kenshin figured he'd burnt that bridge. Chiyoko might say she understood why he had turned her out -- but the fact that she had written to Shinya, and not to him, spoke volumes.

Still, he wrote her a letter back, and included money, though she hadn't asked for any, and photographs of all the family.

She did not answer his letter.

Shinya received one more letter from her, indicating that her new sensei had gotten into a spot of trouble with the law and they were leaving town. She didn't say where they were going, and she did not write again.

----------

1907

---------

"Idiot!"

"Baka!"

"Shinya no Baka!"

Kenshin trailed behind Shinya and Byron, more interested in the electric lights that illuminated this street than in the boys' teasing argument. They glowed too bright to look at, like gaslights without the hiss of vapor. Occasionally, they all flickered simultaneously.

Some of the shops along this road had electricity too -- they were open, despite the late evening hour. While electric lights had been commonplace in London for a few years the distribution network had only been set up in this small town a few months before. The warm, even light made the street feel safe ... he wondered if they had electricity in Tokyo yet. He'd have to ask Megumi in his next letter home.

"Kenshin, want ice cream?" Shinya called back to him.

"Aa."

The three of them entered a shop selling ice cream sundaes and chocolates. Shinya and Byron promptly ended up in a debate over the merits of lemon ice cream versus raspberry ice cream. While they were arguing, Kenshin ordered a vanilla sundae with peanuts and caramel and said apologetically to the shopkeeper, "Forgive my friends. They Forget Their Manners."

His tone was ominous; both men suddenly stopped fighting, and favored Kenshin with sheepish grins. He gave them with an innocent look in return, ate his sundae, and watched as, to his amusement, they ordered a cone of each of the debated flavors -- and then proceeded to share, passing the cones back and forth as they continued their walk towards the dojo.

Kaoru had rented the building out to an entertainer who pretended to have spiritual powers. He claimed he could talk to the dead. Kenshin thought he was a charlatan, but he was a harmless charlatan, and his audience was not fooled by the show but enjoyed the pretending. It _was _a very entertaining act, complete with sound effects and objects moving on wires and quite a bit of theatrical behavior from the 'medium'.

The event should be over in about thirty minutes and he and the boys would then need to put all the chairs away before tomorrow's classes. This was a routine that they were all used to -- the building was conveniently located and was booked most nights.

He wasn't expecting trouble at all, so when a trio of local toughs stepped out from an ally, he was honestly surprised. However, after a moment of sizing up the situation, he calmly finished his sundae while the men accosted Byron and Shinya. The biggest, meanest-looking of the three said, "So, pretty boys, which of you is the girl?"

Byron's very public reputation was not something he would ever lose. His obviously close friendship with Shinya -- the two were almost inseparable -- had led to inevitable speculation. In response, the entire family had taken a united attitude of, "Gossip? What gossip?" It was easy to ignore the innuendo because their behavior in public, aside from sharing the occasional ice cream cone, had been absolutely impeccable. People could talk, but they had no proof.

Shinya retorted, "Neither. Why, are you looking for work?"

The man roared. And lunged.

Shinya stepped neatly aside. He stumbled past and right towards Kenshin -- who also stepped out of the way without even pausing from consuming his ice cream.

Shinya handed _his _cone to Byron. Kenshin eyed the three thugs, then ate the rest of his ice cream and calmly walked over to Byron and held his hands out for both their cones. "You might want to help Shinya, that you might."

Shinya was being circled by the three. Byron sighed, handed over the dessert, and said, "Oye. Got room in this fight for one more?"

The fight itself was spectacularly short. Byron held his own -- a few years of training with Kenji and Shinya, and a proper brace for his leg, and he was more than able to match the blows of a few untrained street brawlers. This was not the first fight the two had gotten into together; it seemed some of the local toughs thought a cripple and a skinny Asian man would be easy targets. They were very wrong.

Having left all three men groaning in the street around an assortment of bruises, Kenji and Shinya clapped hands together in triumph and then turned back to Kenshin.

Kenshin licked his fingers. He gave them an innocent rurouni smile and said, "Very good show. But you forgot to defend your ice cream, that you did."

"Ken... Shinta-san!" Shinya shouted, outraged and shocked. "You ate our cones!"

Byron just laughed.

Kenshin waved his hand in front of his mouth as a sudden ice cream headache struck with enough pain to make his eyes water. He was grinning.

----------

1908

-----------

He waited at the train station, impatiently. Kaoru had been away six months -- to Japan, at long last. Ostensibly, for Kenji, it was a business trip. He was overseeing Viscount Trevor's interests in a new factor. Kaoru and Shinya, along with Byron, had gone to Japan to see old friends -- or in Byron's case, meet them.

With some amusement, he wondered just how cruel Yahiko had been to Byron. Meeting the parents of your lover was always hard, without adding in the complicating factor of _no heirs_ ... Shinya was Yahiko's only son, and there would be no more Myojins if Shinya didn't reproduce himself somehow.

Some men in Shinya's position would marry for that reason alone. There were certainly enough women who would have been delighted to have a marriage of that sort with Shinya -- the boy was closely tied to two very wealthy British families and his father was a hero, as was his grandfather. Yes, there were plenty of women who would marry without any promise of love in the arrangement.

And there would be children, of course, and perhaps the woman would be a friend.

But when Kenshin and tentatively suggested that to Shinya, because he knew that Shinya longed for children of his own, and that Shinya _was _Yahiko's sole heir ... Shinya had shook his head impatiently. "No. I won't do that to Byron. I won't make him wonder if my affections are split between him and another."

And that was that.

Yahiko would, Kenshin knew, accept Shinya's choice. Grudgingly. And not without some sour teasing. Of both of them.

Then the train was pulling into the station and then Kaoru was getting off and, in a rare display of public affection, she was hugging him and he was hugging her back. She murmured, "I couldn't wait to get home to you, Kenshin. I couldn't wait to get home. This was the longest train ride ever, I swear the last hour took as long as the last six months to pass!"

Home. He realized she'd called England _home _and said nothing. He only held her close. Home was where your family was.

---------------

1910

---------------

Kenshin reached up and turned on the electric light over his desk. Then he turned it off again. And then turned it back on, with what he knew was a silly grin on his face.

Electricity had reached Jessica's manorhouse two weeks before. It was a most marvelous thing to be able to snap on the lights simply by flicking a switch or pulling a chain. In an extravagance of spending she'd purchased electric lights for every room after having the whole house wired.

Off. On. Off. On. Off ...

Footfalls, behind him, in library doorway. The footsteps were irregular, and with them came the faint clicking of a cane on the floor -- in the privacy of the manor, Byron often left his brace off. It was uncomfortable, and he was not shy about using the cane around people he trusted.

... Kenshin snapped the light back on and said, "Evening, Byron-san."

"Mm. Kaoru was doing the same thing a minute ago, up in her room. With the light." Kenshin could hear the grin in Byron's voice without even turning around.

"Was she, now? It is remarkable."

"Hmm, yes." Byron sounded less impressed. But then, he hadn't been born in a farming village so poor that _food _was sometimes a remarkable thing. Kenshin refused to lose his awe of the world's growing technological advances; to do so was to forget what and where he was from. To not be in awe was to not be _grateful_ for what he had now.

Still, it was embarrassing to be caught playing with the light like one of the children. He smiled and said, "Byron, can I help you with something?"

"Maybe." Byron hesitated uncomfortably. Suddenly he thrust a photograph at Kenshin and asked, "Who are the people in the picture with you?"

"Where did you find this?" Kenshin asked, glancing at the photograph. By Byron's tone of voice, he knew already who they were. There were enough safe photos of the boys around as children -- safe because they did not have _him _in them -- that Byron would have no difficulty identifying both boys as children.

"Tell me, please."

"The older boy is Kenji. He was ten. He's holding Shinya, who was two. And me, of course. -- I was doing some grocery shopping and the photographer was in town. I had some photographs taken for Kaoru and Tsubame. I thought they might like copies. And one for each of the boys."

Byron was silent, for a long moment.

"The workmen installing the electric needed to move the dresser in Shinya's room. I found the photo in the top drawer when I pulled it out to make the dresser lighter ... I wasn't snooping."

"I never said you were, that I didn't."

Very hesitantly, Byron asked, "How old are you? If you don't want to tell it's fine, but this was a long time ago and you haven't changed at all."

Kenshin didn't try to evade the question. It was time, he thought, that Byron knew the truth. "Sixty two."

"You look younger than I am." Byron stared at him.

"I'm well preserved." The old joke was getting hoary, and there was no Sanosuke around to insert the punch line. He shook his head, then said, "I'll tell you the whole story, if you promise me that you will tell no one else. More than my own life is at stake."

"I promise. Of course. What are you -- a faery of some kind?"

Kenshin snorted a laugh. "Oro! No. At least, I don't think so. I'm Immortal, Byron, and I've spoken to Immortals who are millenia old -- and none have a good explanation of what we are."

"Immortals ..."

He shook his head. "My story starts long before I ever knew I was Immortal. And in truth, I'm glad you asked. I have wanted to tell you but I was not sure you would believe me."

And so he told Byron his tale. And when he was done, Byron was silent.

"Byron?" Kenshin said, "I haven't changed, that I haven't. I am still the man you've known for eight years. I'm just ..."

"... older than my grandfather." Byron interjected, sounding a little stunned by all the revelations.

"Not quite that old."

"Well, now I understand why everyone defers to you on so many things. And why the children call you 'Father' in Japanese and 'Uncle' in English." Byron grinned. "I don't speak much Japanese, but I do know a _few _words after living here for all this time."

"Hnnh." Kenshin said. "They're not supposed to call me 'father' even in Japanese in front of anyone else, but they forget sometimes around you. I have never bothered to correct them -- I had hoped you would ask about _that, _that I have."

"I just thought it was a weird Japanese thing."

"Weird Japanese ..." Kenshin gave him a _look _from beneath his bangs. But the mild banter told him that Byron was going to be okay with this new knowledge about his identity. And Byron's next words confirmed that.

"Shin... Kenshin, is it okay if I keep calling you Shinta?"

"If you think you'll get confused between what to call me in private and what to call me in public, I'd prefer you continued to call me Shinta." He smiled. "Jessica calls me Shinta-san all of the time. It does not bother me to be called by the name I was born with."

"After listening to that story," Byron said slowly, "I have a feeling that Shinta is who you would prefer to be."

Kenshin shook his head, denying that. Gently, he corrected, "Shinta is the man I often wish I could be, but he is not who I am. He is, however, a pleasant fiction, that he is. A young man with no cares beyond his family, and no great errors in his past."

Byron nodded. "Sometimes I wish I could be someone other than who I am too."

----------------

1911

------------------

"Yukio-kun," Darius said, almost doubled over with laughter, "That is _not _an appropriate joke to tell a priest."

Yukio's grin was impudent. "You laughed, Darius-sama."

"Yes, and I should tan your hide now ..."

"But you don't believe in violence!" Yukio squeaked in mock alarm and darted out the rectory door. He shouted over his shoulder, "See you tomorrow, Father Darius!"

Kenshin walked across the room and pulled the door shut. At fourteen, Yukio was more than capable of getting himself home. Eventually. Likely, he'd ride in the manorhouse gates sometime around dusk after having ridden his horse all over the countryside.

"He's growing up," Darius observed, quietly. Mirth still danced around Darius's eyes -- Father Darius had only feigned shock at the mildly off color joke.

"Aa, he is," Kenshin switched to Japanese. With a rueful grin, he said, "Part of me can't wait to see him married and out from under foot. Part of me ... he's our baby, Darius. When he's grown and gone, there will be a huge child-sized hole in my life."

Darius sighed. "You can adopt more. You _will _adopt more, Kenshin. I don't need psychic abilities to see that in your future."

"_I _can. Kaoru is fifty, Darius." He blew out a sharp breath that made his bangs bounce. "It's not fair to her to ask her to raise more babies. I believe she's enjoying being a grandmother, however."

Darius snorted. "Yes, I imagine so. How is Iku's little one doing?"

"Better. She scared us there, for a bit." Kenshin had been gravely worried when Iku's infant daughter had contracted a serious case of influenza; he had seen far too many children die of it. And the baby was only six months old.

Darius sighed. "Kenshin, I need to talk to you."

"Aa?" He said, "Over Go?"

"Nothing so involved as that, I'm afraid, and I have some correspondence to write, so I regret I haven't the time for a game tonight. But -- Kenshin, people are noticing you do not age."

His heart sank. "I had feared that time was coming."

"I think the rumors are not serious yet, but, for what it's worth, most of us face this, again and again. My own time here grows short. I already have plans to move, to reinvent myself. I must. You must also, and soon."

"I know." His heart was heavy in response to Darius's words.

"Do you have any plans?" The priest asked, in a kindly tone.

Kenshin lifted one shoulder in half a shrug. "It is too soon to return to Japan."

"You have not really seen the world, have you? You wandered through Japan, but never beyond it. You should sell the dojo in town, and travel, Kenshin. You and Kaoru." Darius sat down at his desk, and regarded Kenshin with sad eyes.

"Kaoru will miss everyone so much," he said, remembering how miserable Kaoru had been when they first came to England.

"You cannot stay once people begin to notice you. It is a harsh truth, but one that you must face as an Immortal." Darius's words were firm, and compassionate, all at once. "Kenshin. Listen to me. You must plan now for your future, or you must expect to flee in the night with no plans made."

"Aa. I know." He sighed. "I do wish to see the world, Darius. I always have. Part of me wandered because I had no home, and no family. Part of me ... simply enjoyed it."

"So take Kaoru with you. And then send her _home _periodically, without you." Darius smiled at him. "Your wife is not completely without a sense of adventure."

"That ... might work. I'll discuss it with her."

"I recommend America, to start." Darius said. "It's a beautiful country, and with your English skills and your hair they will assume you are European, perhaps from some small and exotic kingdom, but not Asian. They will think Kaoru is your servant. I would not anticipate much trouble there if you are careful and smart, which you are. You could spend years alone traveling through the United States and its territories."

He nodded. He would talk to Kaoru. Perhaps this might work.

Perhaps it might even be fun.

But ... the children. His heart wrenched at the thought of leaving the older ones behind, even though they were all mostly grown. And Yukio was too young to be on his own.

Maybe they could wait a few years.

Darius said, "Kenshin? You've chosen a hard path, to be an Immortal who has such close family ties. Many of us ... do not ... have them."

Kenshin glanced at him briefly. He had found out about some of Darious's history from inference and casual comments. He thought, with a sudden jolt of realization, _He always chooses religious denominations to serve which require vows of chastity._

Darius smiled at him.

"Were you ever married?" Kenshin asked. It was a question that would have rendered most of Darius's parishioners' speechless with shock.

"Yes." Darius said, simply. "A very long time ago." The ancient priest's eyes went distant, as if looking into deep into his past.

"Then perhaps you understand why I am so torn."

"I do." Darius bowed his head. "But Kenshin, you _cannot _allow your personal feelings to bring harm to those you love. I trust you will make the correct decisions when the time comes."

"Yes," Kenshin said, voice muted and eyes closed. He also lowered his head, bangs hanging down over his eyes. "I will make the right decisions this time."

-------------------------


	66. Chapter 66

Yukio, at fourteen, was a head taller than Kenshin and his gangly limbs and oversized hands and feet promised that he had some growing yet to do. He sprawled on the sofa in the library, nose in a book, booted feet propped up on one arm. He reminded Kenshin quite a bit of an almost grown puppy. And, in Kenshin's opinions, he had the manners of the same.

"Feet. Shoes. Off!" Kenshin said, without even really thinking about the scolding, as he walked past him with a couple of magazines that the girls had left out. He put the magazines away on a shelf.

Father," Yukio said, sitting up and saving his place in the book with a piece of paper that had artwork on it from one of his nieces, "Can I talk to you for a second?"

"Hnnh?" Kenshin turned to face him. "If it's about your feet on the furniture, that's not negotiable."

"Father!" Yukio laughed, white teeth flashing in a grin. Then he sobered. In a very quiet voice, he asked, "Father, are you really leaving next year?"

"Yes, I am." Kenshin said. This would be a serious talk, then. "In the spring." He sat down on the sofa next to Yukio, and reminded Yukio, "You know it's up to you if you want to come with us, or stay here with your brother."

"I don't want you to go. And I don't want to leave here. I want you to stay here. With us." He just sounded miserable.

"I can't do that. You know why." Kenshin bowed his head, bangs falling forward into his eyes. Yukio was too young for this and there was nothing he could do about it -- he was certain the boy felt bitterly abandoned. However, he was terrified, deep in his heart, that if he did not leave now, it would mean trouble for his children. "I am sorry, that I am. I wish I aged, and grew old and grey, and could be the wise old man you deserve to have as a father ... I would rather be old, and be your father until the day I die, than be what I am."

Yukio frowned at him. He had expressed the opinion before that he was glad that Kenshin would never die of old age -- though it seemed he wasn't going to bring that subject up now. "It's just not fair that you have to leave."

"No." Kenshin agreed, "That it isn't. I am sorry, Yukio."

"There's a girl." Yukio sounded miserable. "Here."

"Abby." Kenshin nodded wisely. The girl had worked for Jessica for a year, as a maid. She was very young, very earnest, and very intelligent. She also wasn't the prettiest girl in the world -- she'd had smallpox -- and he was proud of Yukio for overlooking her scars. Kenshin rather liked her.

"You know?" Yukio sounded shocked that Kenshin was aware that he had a crush on one of the servant girls. Well, in Yukio's favor, he had been discrete, but people _talked _to Kenshin. One of them was Bessie, who found the whole thing 'cute' -- she had told Kenshin that she had twice seen Yukio slip small gifts to Abby, and that they talked when they thought no one was around.

Bessie herself had matured from a gangly teenager to a quiet, introspective young woman who, Kenshin suspected, knew a lot more than she let on and was choosy about who she shared her gossip with.

"I saw it in my crystal ball, that I did."

Yukio snorted. "One of the servants told you. -- I do like Abby. I know she's just a servant ..."

"Yukio Himura," Kenshin said, sternly, "Do _not _let me hear you call that girl 'just a servant'!"

Abashed, Yukio stared at his hands.

"Do not forget that _you _are a peasant's son." Kenshin frowned at him. "You are _not _above her."

"_She _keeps reminding me that everyone thinks we're so far apart socially."

Kenshin sighed. The stratification of social classes here was very similar to that of Japan. And given that Lord Alastair Trevor publicly called Yukio his brother and treated him as such -- well. Yukio's social status was somewhat nebulous, but Kenshin knew that it was well above 'chambermaid.'

"Her father thinks that I'm just after her skirts." Yukio rested his chin on his knees, tucking his boots underneath him. "Abby says her father wants her to quit here. Because I talk to her and the other servants have told him about it."

"Boots. Off." Kenshin reached a hand out, hooked his fingers under Yukio's heel, and flicked one leg off the couch. He glared. With an abashed look, Yukio dropped the other foot to the ground. Kenshin blinked, and the glare disappeared, replaced with a concerned look. "-- You ought to speak to her father, that you should. There would be no harm in introducing yourself."

"If I leave with you -- maybe there's no point." He sounded miserable. "You're talking about leaving after Christmas."

While Kenshin was nominally Shinto, he wasn't especially inclined to be religious. Christmas was a fun time of year, and he had no problems with the family cheerfully decorating the house and giving gifts. And anyway, Jessica and the staff were Christian. And Jessica's children were being raised Christian at Emily Marshall's ferocious insistence.

So, Christmas.

And he had to admit, he liked the giving of gifts and the spirit of the season.

He said, "Maybe you should spend more time with her, and her family. Then you will be able to make an educated decision. If you get to know her better you will _know _if you want to stay behind and court her, or leave with Kaoru and I."

He'd only been a year older than Yukio when he'd married Tomoe. And younger when he'd gone to war. Fourteen, he figured, was old enough to make some hard decisions. He was just sorry that he had to force his youngest son to make them now. Yukio had to decide between tagging along after his parents, or staying with his older brother and sister in law in the house he'd grown up in.

"I ... what do I do, Father? Just show up on his doorstep and say, 'Hi, I'm the Oriental guy who thinks your daughter's absolutely beautiful?'"

"I would suggest," Kenshin said, with a smile that grew broader, "Telling him that you want to court his daughter properly."

"He'll think I'm insane. He'll be suspicious. I have a _lady _after me."

"Lady Isabel. She is quite pretty." Lady Isabel was thirteen, and, in Kenshin's estimation, one of the more spoiled children he'd had the misfortune to meet recently. Her interest in Yukio was blatant. And against her parent's wishes. Kenshin chalked it up to equal parts rebellion against her parents and interest in the exotic.

His son snorted. "Yes. She also has something mean to say about everyone she knows. All she does is gossip. Abby ... _talks_. We could have conversations for hours."

"Ah." Kenshin nodded sagely. "And when you're both old and grey, which would you prefer -- the girl who has a vicious habit of backbiting, or the one who you like to talk to?"

"You're so wise, Father," Yukio said, voice only a little mocking.

Kenshin responded, in a tone of voice that dripped and oozed good cheer and little hearts, "Ah, you finally admit it!"

Yukio laughed, but the laugh quickly faded. Seriously, he asked, "What do you think I should do?"

"Yukio," Kenshin said, pleased that the boy was asking for advice, "I think you should remain here. You have family here -- you are my son, but there are others who love you dearly. You have school to finish, and a sweetheart, and nieces and nephews that adore you. But -- if you chose to come with us, I will not stop you. If you come with us, you will see the world. You will go places and do things that very few children have the opportunity to do. You will have adventures and make the memories of a lifetime."

"You're not helping me decide here, Pops." Yukio said, sourly.

Kenshin shrugged. "I am giving you the opportunity to make some decisions. And -- we will be back to visit, most likely to the house on the shore, every summer. You can change your mind when we return."

Yukio frowned. Then he said, going back to the subject of _Abby_, "You couldn't talk to the father for me, could you?"

Kenshin sighed, "Yukio, my son, I look younger than _you_. How is it going to look to the father if your mother's young 'cousin' shows up to speak for you?"

"He's going to hate me."

"Perhaps," Kenshin reached out and ruffled Yukio's short hair. "Be yourself and either he'll like you or he won't. If he doesn't like you, continue to behave with integrity, as the boy I've raised you to be -- and you may change his mind."

"How come people think we're bad just because we're not white?" Yukio said, suddenly, miserably.

"Because people are afraid of what they don't understand. And -- it works the other way, too. Japan can be quite unfriendly to foreigners." It was a simplistic explanation. Yukio's question, however, had been mostly rhetorical. They'd had far longer discussions about hatred before. Yukio was a child who _thought _about things and Kenshin had found raising him a joy.

Yukio started to tuck his knees to his chest again, and Kenshin raised a hand to swat his booted foot. Yukio sighed, and reached down and started undoing the laces. "Kenji says that he wants me to go to college."

Which, actually, tied directly into the discussion of Japan. Kenji and Jessica were eager to send their younger siblings overseas to run their Asian business interests. Yukio was completely fluent in English and Japanese -- though Kenshin was a bit dubious about his fluency in Japanese _culture_. He didn't remember Japan at all, and while Kenshin had _told _him a lot about Japan, it wasn't the same as living it.

Aki was currently running a factory in Osaka. Having left Japan at twelve, he had been young enough to adapt to Victorian life -- but old enough to remember Japan. Kenshin was quite proud of how seamlessly Aki moved between the worlds.

Iku had married the son of a moderately wealthy factory owner; Kenshin liked the boy, even though he was certain that the marriage as at least partly a business ploy. There was love there, and partnership. And the business ploy at worked; the factory owner had landed several lucrative contracts with Jessica and Kenji.

Both of Yukio's middle siblings were at college now -- his sister was getting very high marks indeed. He was proud of them both.

Which left Yukio.

Yukio, feet now bare, wrapped his arms around his legs and regarded Kenshin over his knees. "I'm not sure I want to go to college."

"I wish I could have gone to school," Kenshin said wistfully. "I am so happy that you and your siblings have opportunities that I never had. And that I never even expected _you _to have, when I took all of you in."

"Guilt trip!" Yukio glared at his father.

"Is it working?" Kenshin asked brightly. "If not, I have to work harder at it."

"Father ..." Yukio sighed. "You don't need to try to make me guilty. I just ... I ..." He shook his head, miserably.

"There's nothing wrong with _not _joining the family business, you know. I know Jessica can be insistent ..."

"... overbearing ..." Yukio muttered.

"That, too. Much as we both love her, she can be _very _bossy. She can ..."

At that instant, an Immortal buzz rippled across his consciousness. Kenshin froze. The only Immortal he knew of in the area was Darius, and Darius would not leave holy ground without a very good reason. Anyway, he didn't think this was Darius. The buzz was ... different.

He rose. "Yukio, stay here."

"Huh? Father, what's wrong?"

"Stay. Here." Kenshin said, in the tone of voice that nobody in the family ever argued with. He took the stairs two at a time, up to the training room, and snagged his sakabatou off the wall. He ran back down just as someone knocked on the front door.

Yukio peered out the parlor doorway as Kenshin, sword in hand, warily opened it.

A middle-aged woman stared at him. A _Japanese _woman. Who was dressed as a man, though this fooled Kenshin for only a moment. She had no obvious chest, but the swordsman in him recognized _wide hips, narrow shoulders, center of gravity is female, small hands, small feet_ -- and came up with a diagnosis of _woman wearing man's clothes_.

Most folks would have assumed _man. _

She was Asian. Japanese, maybe, or Korean, by her facial features. He'd know for sure when she said something, but she was staring at him in slack-jawed astonishment at the moment and not speaking at all.

"Can I help you?" He said, finally. By the expression on her face, he suspected she was not here hunting his head. She likely had not expected to meet another Immortal -- she wasn't armed with anything more than a palm length knife at her waist, and, likely, a longer knife tucked in one boot. There was a suspicious bulge in her trouser leg. And she might have a gun in the pocket of her coat; one side was hanging heavier than the other.

Kenshin wasn't able to make swords disappear himself, but he could generally detect when _other _Immortals were armed with a long blade that they were concealing with a bit of their power.

By her clothes, she was wealthy; he was slowly concluding that she was one of Jessica's myriad of business friends. Which meant that she was likely dressing as a man because of the demeaning attitude the world in general held towards women.

She mouth shut, opened, shut. She looked like she was trying to say something and finding the words difficult to say. He waited, patiently, for her to find her tongue.

She was well dressed, Western style. He was a little surprised when she finally responded in Japanese, because most people -- even other Asians -- assumed he was European. "Well! _This _explains a few things."

"I'm sorry?" he said, politely.

She grinned, suddenly, a huge grin that made her look years younger, and suddenly, strikingly, familiar. "Apologies, you took me by absolutely surprise, that you did. I always thought we'd meet again, but I never expected here, now, and you looking no older than the day I saw you last. Himura Kenshin, it has been far too long."

So the sense of familiarity was not false. This woman knew him, even though he couldn't quite place her.

She scratched her head and said, "It appears that you died very young. Myself, I took a bullet during the war with Russia, running a naval blockade, a few years back."

He blinked. The words _naval blockade _made him think _boats _and then _pirates _and then ...

"Shuru-dono?"

She grinned even broader, confirming his guess. And it was purely a guess; her appearance had changed so much that he was recognizing her solely on the basis of that smile. And then she was hugging him, wiry arms thrown around him. "It's been thirty years!"

He extracted himself from the hug as soon as was polite and regarded her with a mix of delight at finding an old friend and concern that someone outside the family knew his identity. Though, his lagging brain cheerfully informed him, if Shuru was an Immortal she was a whole lot less likely to tell anyone the truth about his cover identity. "You're one of us?"

"Apparently." She tilted her head, and said, with absolutely impish amusement, "I wonder what would have happened if I'd taken your head all those years ago, when you offered it?"

"I am very glad we didn't find out, that I am." He smiled back, slowly. This was a friend -- someone who he owed his life to, because she had spared his when he had freely offered it to her, and more importantly, she had spared Kaoru's life. And he had saved her life in return.

"What are ..."

"... you _doing here_?" They chorused, almost simultaneously.

She snickered.

"Oro! You first."

"I have a meeting with Lady Trevor," she said. "About my crew and I signing on with her. I'm a few days early -- we had good winds behind us -- so I thought I'd come up and see her. I've worked for her many times before. We're friends."

"Oh." Well, that was a simple enough of an explanation. He trusted she wasn't a pirate anymore.

She grinned. "She wants to open a trade route through some nasty waters. Nobody messes with _my _ships."

"I am not surprised by that."

"Your turn. What, are you some sort of bodyguard for the Lord and Lady?"

Behind Kenshin, Yukio snorted a laugh at that. "Bodyguard!"

Kenshin summoned Yukio forward with a curl of his fingers. "Come here, Yukio, and be polite and say hello to Shuru-dono."

"I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Shuru-san," Yukio said, bowing his head.

"This is my adopted son, Kamiya Yukio." Kenshin smiled at him. He could tell that Yukio was absolutely dying of curiosity about this strange Immortal. He wondered if Yukio had clued in that Shuru was a woman, yet.

"Kamiya -- you are Kaoru's son, then?" She paused, then added, probably for Yukio's benefit, "And no offense, but it's Shiro, by the way. Shiro Yamada."

Kenshin grinned at that; it was a _very _generic name. The fourth son of Yamada ... He guessed the cover identity was as much about being a woman in the rather male universe of sailors as it was about being Immortal.

"I'm Kaoru's son and Kenshin's," Yukio said, with a hit of stubborn defiance. He rarely got the chance to claim Kenshin as his father to anyone; Kenshin caught that note in Yukio's voice and smiled slightly. Yukio was proud to be his son. And that made Kenshin very happy.

Shuru glanced between them, clearly seeking a fuller explanation, but too polite to bluntly ask. Kenshin explained further, "I married Kaoru thirty years ago. We've raised several children. Yukio is our youngest; the rest are all grown. -- Lord Trevor is our eldest."

"Oh, there's a story _there_." Her curiosity got the better of her. Kenshin wasn't surprised by that; he remembered Shuru as being rather ... intense. "Is that why everyone calls him Kenji?"

"Aa. We didn't know his name. Sanosuke named him that; it stuck. He was orphaned in Tokyo and Kaoru and I took him in. We only learned his identity about ten years ago."

She blinked a couple of times, then said, "This is a story I absolutely must hear."

"Well, why don't you come in?" Kenshin said, with a smile. "I'm sure Kaoru would like to see you too."

--------------

Kenshin's laughter could be heard outside the house as Kaoru walked up the drive after a day's teaching at the dojo. She had not heard him sound like that in a very long time. He sounded like he was about ready to choke; he was wheezing between gasps of laughter.

Grinning in response to her husband's mirth, she followed the sounds into the garden where she found Kenshin. For a moment, she stopped and just admired the view -- he was sprawled on the bench with one leg casually thrown out before him, the other tucked underneath him. One arm was draped along the back of the bench and the other was curled around his sword, which he had leaned against his shoulder. He was still chuckling, shoulders shaking, as he regarded a stranger.

The late afternoon sunlight cast long horizontal shadows and glowing sunbeams across the garden; Kenshin was in sunlight, but the bushes behind him were dark. His long hair seemed incandescent, and his amethyst eyes were positively sparkling.

She wished she could freeze the moment in time, forever -- the look of joy on his face was perfect, and the light was amazing.

He saw her, and his grin grew broader.

Of course, he wasn't alone -- he was laughing in response to something, she supposed, that the stranger with him had said. She forced her eyes from her husband (and her mind from thoughts of what she'd like to _do _with her husband, later) to the man with him.

Slim. Dark, short hair. Well cut clothing, expensive. Familiar features. He was seated in a lawn chair, with Yukio seated at his feet, but he rose as she approached. Byron was also there in a chair of his own; Byron also started to get up, then winced and remained seated. Byron's back had been bothering him recently, and Kenshin said something to him, very low, likely telling him not to get up.

"Kaoru-san!" the person cried, in a tone of recognition.

"Yes?" she said, not particularly wary because Kenshin was totally relaxed -- but curious. She didn't know him -- at least, she didn't think so.

"Mother!" Yukio popped up to his feet. "Shiro knows Father from a long time ago!"

"Hai. And you, too, Kaoru-san," the man said, in an amused tone of voice.

"I ..." He _was _familiar. She just couldn't place him.

"He's a she," Kenshin said, mildly, "if that helps."

She blinked. Yes, she supposed that slim figure could be female -- though her face was weatherbeaten and roughened from exposure to the elements to the point where there was no hint of femininity in it.

"My life is much easier," the woman said, "if people think I'm male. Though I think I fooled Kenshin-san for only a few seconds. He's as uncanny as ever."

"Think pirates, Kaoru." Kenshin prompted. And to the woman, "You didn't fool me even that long. You don't move like a man."

"_Kenshin _figured it out," the woman said. "Who I am."

"Kenshin is uncanny, as you observed." Kaoru said, with a sheepish smile. "If I know you, I am sorry. I am not placing your face."

"It's been thirty some years. And I'm not so pretty as I used to be. I'm Shuru." Shuru said.

"... the pirate girl?" Kaoru put the name to a memory. "Amazing! How -- where -- were you _looking _for us?"

"No, no," Kenshin shook his head. "She's running -- spices, was it? -- for Jessica. An honest job, even."

"And lucrative." Shuru grinned roguishly.

Byron put in, "And exciting."

"Yes, that is part of the appeal." Shuru admitted that, readily. "I must confess I do enjoy the adventure."

-------------

Much later that evening, Shuru hugged Kenshin and Kaoru. She said cheerfully, "I'm so glad we got to see each other again. -- I'll drop in, next time I'm in town."

"I may not be here," Kenshin said, quietly. "We believe it's time for me to move on, and soon. People notice I do not age."

"Ah. Well, then, our paths will cross again, I am certain of it." She grinned. "If you're in a town with a port, look to see if the Dawn Tiger is there -- that's my flagship, and it's rare that I'm not with it."

With a cheerful wave she headed up the road, then, walking back to the train station. After she was out of sight, Kaoru said, "Well. That was certainly unexpected."

Kenshin glanced at her. Kaoru looked like she was sucking on a lemon. His joy at meeting an old friend -- and another Immortal he felt he could trust -- was tempered by that expression.

"Kaoru, are you well?"

"Just ... I wish it was _me _who was going to live forever. At your side." She wouldn't meet Kenshin's eyes. "I wish ... I wish I wasn't growing old. Meeting her ... it drives home that I'm going to grow old and die." Bitterly, Kaoru asked, "Why her? Why not me?"

Kenshin said softly, "I wish you were Immortal too, that I do. When time takes you from me ... I will be alone."

She ran her hands through her hair, which was greyer with each passing year. She looked at him with eyes that had more and more wrinkles around them, seemingly more each time he looked at her, and she said, voice choked, "It's just so bitterly unfair. I don't want you to be alone, Kenshin. It's so unfair!"

He tilted his head back, staring up at the stars. The moon was full, but it was a muggy night and the stars were somewhat dim. After a moment, he said, "May I come to your bed, tonight?"

With a small laugh, she said, "It amazes me that find me attractive still. I've got wrinkles. And pudgy bits. And saggy bits."

He met her gaze. Hesitantly, shyly, because he was never good at expressing just _how _much he loved her, he said, "When I look at you, Kaoru, I do not see the fifty year old woman. I see the sixteen year old girl who I fell in love with." He blew out a short, sharp breath. "Inside -- you will always be the woman I love. Your appearance -- it doesn't matter, not to me. I am attracted to your heart, before all else."

---------------


	67. Chapter 67

Chapter 67

Kenshin was doing katas on the lawn when he saw Yukio riding down the driveway. Yukio was wearing his finest clothes -- well, Kenshin amended, his finest clothes and Shinya's new overcoat. He was also riding the flashiest horse they owned, which was a tall red bay stallion that Kenji had given Byron several years ago for his birthday.

He paused, and waved Yukio down.

Yukio said, defensively as Kenshin approached, "I have Uncle Byron's permission!"

"I know you do," Kenshin said -- that Yukio would borrow a horse without asking first hadn't crossed his mind. "I just wanted to tell you to be careful on that stud. He hasn't been ridden in a couple of months." Byron's back had been bothering him, and he had not been riding.

"I can handle him." Yukio still sounded defensive.

"Aa, that you can. Just humor your father." Kenshin rested a hand on the stallion's shoulder. "Are you going to talk to Abby's father?"

"Yeah." Yukio hesitated, then said, challengingly, "You gonna follow me?"

"Want me to?" Kenshin offered.

"No." A hint of teenage rebellion was there. Kenshin almost smiled at that; he was remembering all the other teenagers he'd known -- and the one he'd been, once. Knowledge of Yukio's likely outraged reaction if he thought that Kenshin was laughing at him helped him keep his expression schooled to careful neutrality.

"Then no, I won't follow." Kenshin scratched the horse's withers and was rewarded by a slobbery nuzzle from the stallion. He put a hand up, gently pushing the animal's mouth away -- though Byron was a very good horseman and his stallion was very well trained, Kenshin had learned the hard way to never trust a stallion's teeth. "And good luck."

"Thanks, Father!" Yukio tapped the horse with his heels and took off at a canter down the drive. Kenshin watched him go, a little worried and tempted to follow anyway.

Then he decided against it. Yukio was a smart kid -- well spoken, easy going, intelligent. While he had no idea what Abby's father's reaction would be, he assumed Yukio could handle anything up to and including blatant rejection without losing his cool.

It would be nice, he thought, if Yukio decided to stay in England for a few more years. He honestly thought that was the best choice for his son; to stay with Kenji and Jessica, complete his schooling, and find a good job either working for the family businesses or with some other opportunity. The Japanese ministry would likely be happy to have a bilingual employee who was educated in the West.

On the other hand, there was something to be said for the sort of education one got by traveling and seeing the world. And he was afraid that if he forced Yukio to stay behind that the boy would feel abandoned. Kenshin, an orphan himself, had no desire to cause that sort of grief for his own son.

But -- on the whole, he'd prefer it if Yukio chose to stay behind. And maybe if he had a sweetheart he'd have more reason to do so.

---------------

Abby's house was out in the country; Yukio found it from directions that Abby had given him earlier that day. She'd given him directions reluctantly, warning him repeatedly that it was pointless to talk to her father. Well, maybe it was, but he wanted to try. She'd also told him that, "We're very poor, Yukio. I hope you won't judge me by my home."

He'd wanted to hug her, but they weren't to that level of a relationship yet. She still called him "Mister," even. So he had simply smiled, instead, and assured her, "I judge you on _you_. Besides, Shinta just reminded me today that my parents were likely poorer than your father."

"Really?" she'd sounded shocked by that.

"Truly," he'd told her, with a bit of a laugh. "I don't remember it, but Aki says we were so poor we didn't even have enough food to eat or warm winter clothes. No shoes, even. I got really lucky when Kaoru and Kenshin took me in -- otherwise, I might be a beggar on the streets of Tokyo."

"You, a beggar?" She had grinned, baring an even row of white teeth. "That, I cannot believe, Mr. Himura."

As she had warned him, her home was a run down stone farm house that needed new thatch for the roof -- he glanced around as he rode up, and wondered if helping her father with some chores and maintenance wouldn't make the man more inclined to like him. He wouldn't mind the work, and he could pull weeds and scrub with the best of them -- his parents rewarded misbehavior with the vilest chores they could imagine. He'd mucked the stables for a _month _last year after he'd gotten in a fistfight with one of Kaoru's students.

The fact that the student had called Kaoru some dirty names behind her back had not mitigated the punishment. Kenshin was very clear that you didn't throw the first punch. You were allowed to _finish _the fight once the other party struck out at you, but you weren't allowed to start it.

Abby's yard was muddy where it wasn't full of weeds. His horse pulled eagerly towards a juicy clump of thistles as he sat, contemplating the problem of where to leave the horse. He needed to tie the stallion up somewhere -- the fence was sagging and wouldn't hold and the only tree, a half-dead apple tree, had a rusting plow leaning against it. There was a hitching rail near the barn, but it, also, was of dubious soundness and there were broken glass bottles glittering in the dirt.

He pictured Abby -- who was always neatly dressed and clean and happy -- and had a hard time picturing her living in this place.

The problem of where to leave the stallion was solved when a boy of about ten appeared from the barn. He stopped short, stared, then shouted, "Oye! Who're you?"

Yukio dismounted. Abby had mentioned a couple younger brothers -- family was important to Yukio, and he had taken note of their names and ages. He guessed, "Are you Mikey?"

Her father was Michael Greenfield -- this was Michael, the second, he thought.

The boy didn't confirm Yukio's guess, but he didn't deny it, either. "Yer one of Lord Alastair's friends, aintcha?" The boy walked over, wiping dirty hands off on dirtier trousers. "Nice horse."

"I'm Lord Alastair's brother." Yukio scratched the stallion's neck. Honesty compelled him to add, "And yes, he's a pretty boy but he's not mine. His owner's not been feeling well and I felt sorry for the big guy because he was standing around all day. He likes to run."

__

Running had been fun -- he'd let the stallion out for several miles and the horse, given a loose rein, had galloped easily. They'd hurdled a few fences and one good-sized creek. But thinking back, though, he now realized that Abby's walk to the manorhouse probably took her hours. And she started work at dawn. Likely she was leaving at three or four in the morning.

He thought of the pretty young woman, with her cheerful smile and intelligent conversation -- and felt guilty. Himself, he often slept until a few minutes before breakfast, which was served at eight in the morning.

"Watcha want?"

"Is your Father here?"

"Nnhhn."

Yukio supposed that was an affirmative.

"E's inside." The boy offered, but didn't seem inclined to go find him.

Yukio fished in his pocket and found a few coins. "Can you hold my horse while I talk to him?"

"Sure!" The kid snatched the coins from his fingers and reached for the reins.

"Just let him graze. And watch his teeth. He'll nip." Yukio patted the stallion one final time then walked up to the house.

He knocked, and as he did, his stomach flipped over with nerves.

Gods, he did like Abby. She was funny and smart, and her eyes always lit up when she saw him. She laughed at his jokes, and she was curious about the world -- he loved sharing his schoolwork with her, because she was so very interested in _learning_.

That was actually how he'd first taken note of her -- she'd seen him building a crystal radio from a kit and had timidly asked how it worked, and he'd discovered that she was intelligent enough to understand his explanations. Her shyness had rapidly evaporated as he'd answered her questions, and her interest had been genuine and backed up by a solid intellect. Those brains made him want to talk to her a whole lot more -- and not just because she was pretty or because he was attracted to her.

But he also knew he was Asian. And not Christian. And despite his family ties, many people considered him only slightly above 'dog' in social status. And Abby had warned him that she didn't think he had a chance of impressing his father -- he'd told her he was going to talk to him and she'd told him he was wasting his time.

When the door opened, he opened his mouth -- and couldn't think what to say. His brain simply wouldn't work. This was so very important to him.

"What?" The man demanded.

"I'm Y-yukio Himura." He found himself stammering.

"Yuyukio Himura." The man echoed him, sounding very doubtful. "What do you want?"

"It's Yukio, sir. Sorry. Are you Michael Greenfield?"

"Yeah." His eyes narrowed. "Did Abby do something? Is she in trouble?"

"N-no sir. Abby's fine." He swallowed hard. "I-I just wanted to talk to you."

He grunted, "Why?"

Yukio took a deep breath and steeled his nerves. This man was staring at him with frank dislike. He was relatively used to that sort of look, but it dismayed him to see it from a man he'd hoped would be at least tolerant towards him. Abby had been right about her father's opinion of him. She'd said that it didn't matter what he said, that Michael Greenfield would think the worst of him.

"Sir. I would like your permission to court your daughter. I know you don't think much of me, but I swear, I'm ..."

"No." Greenfield started to turn to go back inside.

"Wait!" Yukio said, desperately. "Look, sir, if my intentions were bad I'd be going behind your back."

Greenfield stopped, turned back. Frowned at him. "Figured you already were sneaking around with her. Heard you were sniffing around her. Is she pregnant or something?"

Yukio shook his head. "It's not like that! I just -- look, I know I'm not white. I know you probably think I'm not good enough for your daughter. But sir, I'm honest. I won't sneak around with her."

Kenshin would have his _hide _if he tried anything secretive with Abby. And Yukio had learned a long time ago that the odds of keeping secrets from a former hitokiri were astonishingly low. Kenshin didn't exactly snoop, though sometimes he spied. However, he was so very good at reading body language that sometimes it seemed to Yukio as if Kenshin had supernatural powers.

And Kaoru snooped.

The man glowered. "You're right. You're not good enough."

Yukio met his eyes and said, "What can I do to change your mind, sir? You don't know me. If you want to come over to the manorhouse and get to know me -- and my family -- you'd be welcome. I can tell you about my prospects for my future, if you'd like. I'll go to college, and I know I can get a very good job with my brother and sister-in-law, the Lord and Lady Trevor."

"They're not your family," the man snorted. "You're deluding yourself. They're delusional, too."

"Family's about more than blood, sir." Yukio schooled his expression and voice to polite neutrality, even though that comment had struck home. "And actually, it's been made legally so."

Jessica's lawyers had arranged that years before -- Kaoru had formally adopted Kenji under British law, which had been legal even though he was an adult. It was mostly a political statement to silence critics such as the man before him who had not seen Kaoru as Kenji's mother. But it also meant that Kenji _was _legally Yukio's brother.

"Feh. Get lost, kid."

"I'm sorry, sir." Yukio lowered his eyes. "I do like your daughter. She's smart. Most of the girls I talk to -- they're not nearly as smart as she is."

"Get lost." Greenfield sounded genuinely angry now. "Get out of my sight!"

"Yes sir. I'm sorry I bothered you." Yukio managed to remain polite, barely. He wanted to call the man all sorts of names. But -- that wouldn't help matters.

--------------

The stallion walked calmly, on a loose rein -- an hour of hard riding through the country side had taken the high-spirited edge from the animal. He was happy enough to walk now, long stride covering the ground at a sedate pace.

Yukio was angry -- perhaps, angrier than he'd been in his life. After speaking to Mr. Greenfield he had ridden off at a high rate of speed -- the breakneck ride had only given clarity to his fury. He'd done everything right, he thought, and it had all been thrown in his face. It didn't matter how good he was -- some people would always hate him. And unfortunately, one of them was the father of the girl he liked.

He was focused on the anger, and not on his surroundings, so when two burly young men mounted on rough-looking ponies charged out of a copse of trees, he was taken by surprise. His stallion whickered a greeting at the ponies -- Yukio regarded their riders in apprehension. They did not look friendly.

"Leave Abby alone." The older of the two said.

"Who are you?" He said, then guessed, "Matthew and Tobias Greenfield. Her older brothers, right?"

"Yeh. Leave our sister alone, you damned little ..."

Yukio cut him off. "Look, I'm not trying to make any trouble. If I was, I wouldn't have approached your father openly. Just let me go and we won't ..."

Matthew, the older boy, grabbed him by the arm and yanked. Yukio was taken by surprise and unhorsed -- he landed hard on the road. There was a sickening crack from his wrist. The stallion bolted for home. Pain flared, and heat; it consumed his world for a moment.

When he could see again through eyes that watered at the agony, both older boys had dismounted. Matthew was holding the ponies and Tobias was standing over him. He saw Tobias shift his weight and put his good arm up just in time to deflect a kick aimed at his head. Pain forgotten, he scrambled to his feet -- Tobias threw rather ineffective blows at him as he did so -- then caught one roundhouse punch with his hand, drove his knee into the boy's gut, and when he bent over, got him again in the face with the same knee. There was a satisfying crunch of bone. Tobias went down to his knees, hands clapped over his nose, blood pouring between his fingers.

Yukio stepped back as Tobias collapsed. He gripped his wrist and said, "Damnit, I didn't _do _anything. Why are you attacking me ...?"

"You don't have the _right _to touch our sister!"

"I haven't!" Yukio held his good hand up. He was pretty sure his other wrist was broken. "I swear, I haven't _done _anything to her."

"Father said you'd gotten her pregnant or something an' that's why you came. 'e's dealing with her now."

"... What? Dealing with ...?" He shook his head. "I haven't _done _anything. She hasn't either! Unless _talking _is a crime and I don't think it is!"

"Why would _you _want anything to do with _her_?" Matthew snapped. "You just want a lay. And you ain't allowed to touch her!"

"Back up. What is your father doing to her?" Yukio wasn't interested in Matthew's insults towards him. That Michael Greenfield would hurt his daughter because _he _had come calling hadn't crossed his mind. If the roles had been reversed and someone had come wanting to court either of his sisters, and had likely approached Kenji as the official head of the family, Kenji might have sent an unsatisfactory suitor packing -- but the worst that any of them would have done to his sisters was a bit of teasing.

Matthew shrugged.

It was answer enough; Yukio, broken wrist clutched to his chest, headed back towards the run down farmhouse as fast as he could make his legs carry him.

-------------

It was just as bad as he'd feared.

Greenfield had a switch in his hand. Abby was on her hands and knees on the ground, sobbing, as he lashed at her with it. Her dress was torn, and her hair was coming down from its bun. "What did he do? Tell me what he did!"

"Father, nothing! We haven't done nothing!" She sobbed.

Which was true, damnit, and the man didn't believe his own daughter. Yukio stood in yard, unseen by Michael as of yet, horrified. What did the man think his daughter had done that was so awful he had to beat her for it?

Rage surged, and the ferocious protective instincts that Kenshin had cultivated in all of his children. He wasn't going to be polite _now. _

Greenfield growled at her, "That young man has money, and powerful connections. The only reason he'd want _you _is if you're carrying his baby and then he's not going to marry you, he's just ..."

"Stop it!" Yukio streaked forward and grabbed the switch arm with his good hand and drove his weight into Greenfield -- hip, elbow, shoulder. The man was quite a bit heavier than he was -- but he sent him staggering backwards by leverage and technique.

"You again! Get out of my ..." Greenfield slashed at him with the switch.

The length of slim tree branch caught Yukio in the face. It _hurt_. He lunged as Greenfield pulled it back for another blow, caught the man's wrist, yanked forward, and kicked the man in the knee with just slightly less force than would have been needed to break his leg. Greenfield went down with a howl of pain. "You're an asshole," Yukio informed him, as the man lay on the ground, whimpering. "Neither I nor your daughter have done anything wrong."

He held his hand out to Abby, who was staring at him in shock. She took it, and he pulled her to his feet. Her face was streaked with tears and she was shaking. "Go. Go, Yukio!" She shoved at him, trying to get him to leave. "You're just making things worse! Go!"

"Not on your life," he growled, "I'm not leaving you here for this arse to beat up more. C'mon!"

"No!"

He growled in frustration at her, grabbed her wrist, and headed out of the yard. She struggled for a moment then followed, streaming silent tears.

In the lane, away from her father, he put his good arm around her shoulders. "You can come back to the house with me. We'll sort this out there."

"Yukio ..." She tried to shove away. "Yukio, no. He's my da!"

"Neither of us did anything wrong!" He snarled. "He was beating you for no reason!"

"He thought he had a reason. I'm sorry, I didn't know he'd react so badly!" She pushed at his chest and he let go of her. His wrist was throbbing and he clutched it to his chest, and stared at her.

"Your arm ..." She was apparently realizing for the first time that he was hurt.

"Yeah, your brother did this."

"Oh, God." She ran a hand along it. He flinched when her fingers reached a hard, swollen bump just above his wrist. "You've broken it, just above the wrist. We have to get you to a doctor."

"I'll survive. I'm more worried about you."

"Not the first time I've been striped." She shrugged. She touched his cheek -- again he flinched, as her fingers brushed a raw welt. "That'll leave a scar, Yukio. He hit you in the face!"

"Yeah. C'mon. Let's go."

She hesitated, a long moment, then said, "Yeah, I'll go with you. That arm's going to hurt a lot worse in a little bit." She sighed, and glanced past him. "He loves me, you know."

"He was _hitting _you." Yukio made a fist with his good hand in frustration. "You didn't deserve it."

"Awful lot of people would say I did." She smiled at him, though there were still tears in her eyes. "Awful lot of people would say I had to do something wrong to attract your attention. It's what he thinks. He thinks I did something ... dirty ... to draw your attention."

Yukio gave her a one-armed hug, only the second time he'd ever touched her. "We both know that isn't true."

"Yeah." She murmured into his shoulder. "Let's go, before my father comes after us. We should hurry."

-------------

"Kenshin!" Shinya shouted, running into the library. "Byron's horse came back without Yukio!"

Kenshin swore softly, fervently, under his breath. It was late afternoon -- the setting sun cast long sunbeams through the library windows. "Go get a search party ready."

He rose and reached for his sakabatou and overcoat, and shrugged into the sword harness and then into the overcoat. He was halfway to the back door that led to the stables when someone pounded hard on the front door.

Kenshin hurried to the front door and opened it, heart in his throat. A thousand disasters had crossed his mind -- the best case scenario would have Yukio walking home and earning a few blisters after having been unhorsed. Worst case, he'd been killed in a fall.

And some of those scenarions did indeed involve a police officer standing at the front door, the reins of a horse held in one hand. Kenshin stared up at the officer, then said immediately, "Is Yukio hurt?"

"Shinta," the cop said -- Kenshin knew this man from town, and liked him, "Is Yukio here?"

"Et-to ... no, his horse just came home without him. We were going out to look for him."

"He assaulted another boy tonight." The man didn't sound happy about delivering this news. He adjusted his cap with one hand and shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.

"Assaulted?" Kenshin couldn't picture Yukio hitting anyone without cause. Very politely, he asked the officer, "Are you certain he wasn't just fighting back?"

"He broke the boy's nose." The officer said stiffly. "Tobias Greenfield ..."

Kenshin's heart sank. He really should have followed Yukio. "Greenfield -- Abby Greenfield's brother?"

"Tobias told Yukio to leave Abby alone, and your boy hit him. Your cousin Yukio has been making unwanted advances on the girl. Shinta, he's in trouble, but it'll be easier on him if we can find him -- know what I mean?"

"Aa, I know what you mean," Kenshin shook his head, "but Yukio wouldn't throw the first blow. I am guessing, without having spoken to him, that Tobias hit Yukio first and Yukio was defending himself. -- And Yukio was going to talk to Mr. Greenfield, that he was."

"Why?"

"Because he's fond of Abby Greenfield and I told him that if he wanted to court her he'd best approach her father first. Officer, we're not white." Kenshin met the man's gaze squarely, though he had to crane his neck a bit to do so -- the man was Kenji's height, easily. "It would be easy for innocent actions to be misinterpreted. I thought it best that Yukio talk to her father, so that he knows Yukio is honest and genuine in his desire to court Abby."

"Awful lot of people would be offended just by Yukio courting a white woman, nevermind that he's doing it properly." The officer observed, sounding suddenly tired. "Look, Shinta, I've known you a long time. Since that whole mess with Chiyoko, what, ten years ago? I was just a rookie ... You've done a lot of good in the community and you've always been reasonable and honest to work with. I just want to get this sorted out. If Yukio's assaulted someone he'll have to face a judge. If it was self defense -- well, I won't be the one to arrest him. I _know _those two Greenfield boys, and they're trouble, the both of them."

"Officer, I am very worried about Yukio. I propose we find him first, then sort this out. I'm certain that there's a reasonable explanation for any assault he may have committed. And self-defense, which I expect this will turn out to be, is not a crime, even if the one defending himself is Japanese."

The cop grunted agreement with that. Kenshin felt a little bit of relief there. In truth, he liked this man -- the officer had always struck him as fair and intelligent. He was a man dedicated to his job, and well respected in the community. "Sounds like a plan to me."

"Shinya's getting a search party together right now, that he is." Kenshin said. He glanced at the officer's horse, which was lathered with sweat and had obviously been ridden a far distance. "Would you like to borrow a fresh horse?"

"Yes, please," the officer sounded relieved. He reached up and patted his gelding's neck. "I've been out to the Greenfield farm, and then off to where the boys got in a fight, and then to the doctor in town to talk to Tobias, and then here, and I think this fellow's about done. We must have covered twenty miles already."

"You need a motorcar," Kenshin said, somewhat absently.

"Pfa. It'd break down with me somewhere awkward and then I'd be _walking _twenty miles," he said. "I'll meet you around back at the stable. And thank you."


	68. Chapter 68

The horse was a solid black mare, built like a tank and without a single white hair on her anywhere. Officer Daniel Ells had never been met by the family of a suspect with such grave courtesy -- at least, not since the whole mess with the little girl, ten years ago. Offering him the loan of a fresh horse, as if he was a friend, had startled him. He'd also been very grateful -- his gelding was a good solid mount and he had not wanted to ride the animal much farther without a rest.

He remembered that the man riding next to him had been equally courteous ten years ago and then the circumstances had been far more dire. The girl had eventually hung for her crime -- and Shinta Kamiya had been the one to collect the body, he'd heard later. Everyone involved had remarked both on the man's obvious grief at the girl's fate, and his unfailing courtesy. He had gone so far as to make it very clear to all the officials involved that he did not blame them: he blamed _her_.

Yet, he had grieved her.

That had made a big impression on Ells.

And outside of that horrible case, Shinta was _well _known in town. He was hard to miss -- that flame red hair, those uncanny eyes, and his innocent, cheerfully friendly attitude made him very memorable. And he was so short -- it was easy to take him for a child until you looked closer. And even so, while he could pass for twenty, Daniel remembered that Shinta had almost been thirty ten years ago, making almost forty now. That remarkable youthful appearance got frequent comments in town, some of them superstitious in nature.

Ells didn't put much stock in the superstition. What, was he supposed to believe in the fair folk now? And by all accounts Shinta was a very upstanding citizen; he and his cousin, Kaoru Kamiya, frequently donated money and time to various charitable causes. He just chalked up Shinta's appearance to a tendency he'd noted among Asians to look younger than they really were.

He glanced over at the little man, frowning. Shinta Kamiya, the cop concluded, was someone truly special.

Shinta was glancing alertly around the countryside from beneath his thick, over-long red bangs, his eyes never resting in one place for more than a moment. Though he looked calm, he was clearly missing little in his surroundings. Ells wondered if the man had seen military service; he had seen the same sort of watchfulness from soldiers who'd been in combat. It was a survival skill.

By contrast, the Greenfields were trouble. Greenfield Sr. was a drunkard, his two older sons took after dad, and his youngest son was a regular source of petty trouble. There was a passel of cousins, all bad news, as well. The daughter ... well, she'd never come to Officer Ells's attention. She apparently worked for the Lord and Lady Trevor which was where Yukio Himura had met her.

Ells knew Yukio too -- like Shinta, Yukio was polite, well spoken, with a quick smile. There had never been a whiff of trouble about the boy except, Ells thought, something about the kid, firecrackers, and Father Darius when he was much younger. He had a vague memory of Darius turning a much younger Yukio over his knee. And then informing Yukio he was going to tell Shinta, which had upset the kid a lot more than being paddled for setting off fireworks in the church graveyard during church services.

Shinta, when summoned from the gymnasium he and his cousin ran, had not spanked the boy -- though he'd raised a hand as if considering it for a moment. He'd been very angry, likely because he found disrupting religious services incredibly rude. Instead of a beating, however, he had sentenced Yukio to a month of chores at the church. And Darius had taken full advantage of the labor -- for a month, every evening, the boy would be hard at work at manual labor on the church grounds.

Ells had an idea that the _work _had made a far bigger impression on Yukio than the spanking.

Shinta rode in silence, hands quiet on the reins. Shinta's mount was a stout pony mare -- she wasn't very pretty, but she appeared to be very well trained. It was the sort of horse you'd expect an older child to ride. Well, Shinta was child sized and it was doubtless easier for him to get on and off a short horse! He had a good seat, though Daniel noted he was not an expert rider -- he looked comfortable, but not elegant in the saddle.

Suddenly, the man stopped, staring out into a field. Ells followed his gaze. Two figures stumbled towards them -- Yukio, Ells recognized, and the girl Abby Greenfield. Shinta spun his horse, popped competently over the stone fence around the field from a trot -- and dismounted before his horse was fully stopped.

The man snapped something in rapid Japanese at the boy. He looked pissed. Yukio said, defiantly, in English, "I didn't _do _anything wrong, Shinta!"

Shinta snapped, also in English -- likely for his benefit, Ells realized -- "Then tell us what happened."

Ells slid off his borrowed mount, and listened, curious what Yukio's version of the story would be.

The boy glanced at him. "Am I in trouble? Because I was just defending myself! And her!"

'Her', Abby Greenfield, was standing with her arms folded and a very unhappy look on her face. She was shivering, and her dress was torn to the point where it was nearly indecent. Realizing this, Ells shrugged out of his own coat and handed it to her. She yanked it on and hunched down into it. How much of that was 'freezing' and how much was emotion, he wasn't sure.

"Tell us the story," Shinta said, voice very neutral.

"I talked to her father." Yukio sounded almost sullen. Resentful. Angry. "I hoped he would see I'm trying to be _proper _about Abby. She's wonderful." He glanced at her. "I won't ... she deserves _proper_."

Abby didn't smile. She stared at the ground. Ells suddenly had a bad feeling about this.

"Her brothers confronted me on the way home. Matthew yanked me out of the saddle. I broke my arm!" Yukio sounded furious, now. "I didn't do anything wrong. He tried to kick me in the head when I was down on the ground -- I blocked the kick with my wrist," he displayed a hefty bruise on his unbroken forearm, "I ... I think I broke his nose. I was scared and mad. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt him that bad, but he attacked me first!"

It had the ring of truth to it, Ells decided, particularly since the kid had the bruises and broken arm to prove his story. He also had a gash on his face that had dribbled blood onto his collar.

"You shouldn't have broken his nose," Shinta said, with a frown that Ells didn't think was actually for his benefit. It was a genuine rebuke. "It's too easy to kill someone that way, Yukio."

"Yes sir." Yukio sighed. "I know, I just ... I didn't _do _anything."

"Let me see your arm."

Yukio, jaw clenched, extended it. His forearm was swollen and turning purple. Shinta ran his hand over a bump a few inches up from the wrist and Yukio flinched.

"That is broken." Shinta said. "You are lucky, that you are. It is not a bad break and it will heal cleanly. -- Ells, we need to get him to a doctor to have this set, that we do, and splinted as soon as possible. The quicker it is set, the better it will heal."

"There they are!" A shout rang out.

Ells looked up in time to see Michael Greenfield, his son Matthew, and several burly cousins spilling out of the woods. "Get them!" Someone shouted.

"There's a cop ...!" Michael warned. It was a voice of reason, Ells thought, and for a moment he hoped this would not end badly.

But then Ells saw a glint of black metal, long -- a pipe, no, a rifle barrel. It was a hunting rifle. His heart raced; he wasn't armed and he had never felt the need for it before.

Shinta ... just simply wasn't there. One minute he was beside him, the next he -- and Yukio -- were flat on the ground. Shinta crouched over Yukio, one hand snaking up under his overcoat.

A puff of dust rose from the ground near Yukio and Shinta. The report from the rifle cracked a second later. Shinta crouched lower over the boy, eyes gone flat gold. Deadly. When had Ells ever though this was a friendly, harmless man? He stared in shock at that look. It was the expression of a warrior ... it was death, incarnate. An avenging angel.

"There's a policeman!" Michael Greenfield shouted, "You idiot!"

"Oh, shit!"

The rifle moved a few degrees. Belatedly, he realized he was a target.

"Don't shoot the copper!" Greenfield screamed.

He started to dive for the ground. He couldn't _think _...

Shinta _moved_. One minute he was there on the ground flattened over Yukio, the next he _wasn't_. He grunted, and spun about, and blood sprayed as he took the bullet that had been intended for Ells.

Ells watched in horror as Shinta hit the ground hard, a terrible hole having bloomed in his shoulder. And ... he kept moving, rolling back to his feet. He had a fucking _sword _in his hand ... long, slim, deadly. His eyes gleamed flat deadly gold from beneath a fall of fiery bangs. And then he _moved _... impossibly fast.

The man with the rifle fired twice more as he ran towards Shinta. Neither bullet seemed to hit the man. He dodged both times with blinding speed. Then there was a loud _spang _of metal on metal and the rifle was flying through the air in pieces. The sword glittered through the air in a whistling arc, and Ells thought he was going to see a man die ...

The cousin with the rifle went down with a grunt.

Shinta kept moving, almost seeming to dance in a terrible ballet of death, but he was so quick that it was hard to follow his movements. Two more of the men had guns; one got a shot off that missed before a blow to the head from the sword dropped him in his tracks. The other, armed with a pistol, fired two more shots -- they went wild and thudded into the ground frighteningly close to Ells's position. Then Shinta's sword swatted the pistol from the man's hand with so much force that Ells _saw _the man's hand bend entirely in the wrong direction.

Shinta took the man with the pistol out using his elbow as he slipped past him; one hard blow to the jaw and the man dropped like a rock. Ells didn't fail to notice that it shouldn't have been possible for little Shinta Kamiya to hit the much bigger man in the head with his elbow, except that he'd gone _airborne _to do it.

And he leaped again, seeming to hover in the air for a heartbeat, before he came down on Greenfield with a kick and a blow from the sword. Michael Greenfield went down and Shinta stood over him, the tip of his sword resting against the man's throat.

There were two remaining Greenfields -- they bolted, running for the woods.

Daniel Ells clambered back to his feet. Never in his life had he seen a display like that. He wasn't sure if he should arrest Shinta, or congratulate him, but he was utterly impressed.

Golden eyes glittered at him from beneath red hair. The look was focused, cold, deadly. Then Shinta blinked and said, "Are you hit?"

"N-no." Yukio said behind Ells. "We're all okay."

"Good."

Shinta sheathed the sword, making it disappear under his coat in a twinkling. He reached down, grabbed Greenfield by the arm, and yanked him to his feet. Despite his small size, and despite the fact that he was wounded, he physically manhandled the elder Greenfield towards Ells.

"Sit." Shinta said, when he reached them. He shoved Michael Greenfield in the small of his back and he _sat_, plopping unresisting and wordless to the ground.

"You were shot ..." Ells said, uncertainly.

"I am aware of that." Shinta said, tightly. And then he staggered, kneels buckling.

Yukio caught him with his good arm. Red blood bloomed across the boy's shirt. It poured from the wound -- something had burst inside the man's body. Shinta's eyes rolled back in his head. Yukio made a high, keening noise and staggered under Shinta's weight -- when Ells lunged forward to help, he was shocked to discover that Shinta weighed a good bit more than he had expected.

He lowered the man to the ground. Blood bubbled from Shinta's lips as he tried to speak. He coughed, then said, "Y... yukio, tell your mother to ... follow ... the plan."

"No!" Yukio waved his good arm in the air, helplessly.

"You're going to ... have to ... make that choice ... a bit sooner ... I'm sorry ... I am ..."

His head rolled to one side and he started to seize.

"Bloody hell ..." Ells swore, as Shinta's body went slack after a moment.

Yukio started to cry, big gulping tears.

Abby wailed.

"It'll be okay," he said, sounding panicky, to her. "It'll be okay!"

"I didn't do it! I told 'im to stop!" Michael Greenfield said, sounding panicked. "I dinn't do it!"

"Son of a bitch," Ells said. "Son of a god damned bitch."


	69. Chapter 69

Kenshin leaned on the railing of the ship. The air smelled of salt, and fish, and barnacles, and occasionally, a puff of achingly familiar food-smells. Frying fish, he recognized, and his mouth watered in response to the scent of spices he'd known all his life.

The shore they were sailing parallel to was _home_. The houses, the little fishing boats, the docks and markets. He knew them. They were less than three hundred feet off shore; he could make out men wearing straw hats, women in pretty kimonos, and children, and dogs, and cats, and chickens. He saw stands selling fish, and rice, and radishes and fruit.

_Home_.

"Home." Kaoru breathed, echoing his thoughts. "_Home_."

Kenshin scratched at his cheek. Kaoru glanced over at him and said, with amusement, "You're fidgeting again."

"I am still not used to this." He gestured loosely at his face. With some effort, and by starting before they'd even left England, he'd managed to grow something resembling a beard. Yesterday, Kaoru had dyed both that beard and his hair black. This had the effect of making his orange peach-fuzz whiskers look denser, and thicker. It was an optical illusion -- dark hair just concealed more. Even with the dye, and three months of growth, his scars weren't completely hidden, but enough was covered that -- while he might look distinctly scruffy -- he didn't look like _Kenshin_.

It had been thirteen years since he had been home. He shifted uncomfortably in the equally itchy woolen suit of a British businessman. Between his facial hair, the hair dye, the disguise of the suit, and more than a decade of time, he was optimistic that he could escape recognition. He hoped. The idea was that with his fair skin and pale eyes, people would take him to be a mixed-breed gaijin sent to Japan for trade purposes by Marshall Shipping because he was fluent in the language.

"Look!" Yukio said, pointing. "It looks just like Kenji's paintings!"

They were passing a temple on the shore -- a Buddhist shrine. Kenshin nodded agreement. Kenji hadn't painted that particular temple, but he'd done enough buildings that looked like it. Yukio had left Japan while he was still in diapers and knew it only from photographs, paintings, and stories.

Kenshin reached up, caught the end of his ponytail in his fingers, and stared at it. _Black_. He was never going to get used to that, and he wondered how long it would take to grow out.

Kaoru leaned over and confided in him, "I miss your hair too."

He wanted to hug her, but they were in public, and in front of Jessica's employees. He settled for a quiet, "Aa. I don't look like _me _when I look in the mirror."

"How much longer?" Yukio asked, distracting Kenshin.

"An hour or two."

Kaoru groaned. "Longest damned hour or two in my life!"

"You've _been _home," Kenshin reminded her. "I haven't."

------

Megumi groaned, as she saw three people heading up the walkway to the clinic. It was late, and she'd hoped to see no more patients before the end of the day.

The woman was smallboned, with grey hair pulled back into a bun, and startlingly unusual blue eyes that met Megumi's gaze when she opened the door. She grinned, an expression that belonged on the face of a much younger woman. With her, a teenage boy -- undoubtedly her son -- carried a couple of heavy packages. Behind them, another man walked. He was wearing a straw hat which shaded his eyes, and had grown the rattiest beard she'd ever seen. She wondered how old he was; she'd seen women with more facial hair.

He was wearing an English suit, neatly tailored, very foreign in appearance. Over it, he wore a cloak, despite the sunny late-afternoon sky.

"Good evening," Megumi said.

Behind her, Raiko groaned protest at the thought of patients who would likely keep them here past closing hours, "Mooooommmmmm ..."

"Megumi-san?" The woman said, hesitantly. Then, with more confidence, "Megumi-san!"

The older woman broke into a run, impressively spry.

The man behind her was smiling. He continued at a more sedate pace, with considerable natural dignity. She couldn't see his eyes, but that smile was somehow familiar.

The woman tackled Megumi in a hug. "Megumi-san!"

"Umm ..." Megumi hesitantly hugged her back.

"Good evening, Megumi-dono," the man said, behind the strangely behaving woman. His words were familiar, and the light, feminine pitch of his voice.

"Oh! OH!" Megumi suddenly realized who was squeezing her so hard she could barely breath. She returned the hug with more enthusiasm, then. "Kaoru-san! Sir Ken! Kaoru, it's been what, four or five years!? I didn't recognize you!"

"Shh!" Kenshin held both hands up. "We should take this inside, that we should."

-----

Kenshin, inside, still didn't look much like Kenshin even if he sounded exactly like himself. He'd dyed his red hair black and she was vastly amused by his attempt to grow a beard to hide his scars. Mostly, that had worked. You could still see them peeking through the hair, but he definitely didn't look like the same man.

"Gods, Sir Ken, you look silly with that hair on your face," Megumi finally told him.

"This is three month's growth." He indicated his facial hair, ruefully. It was straight and fine and very scanty, for that much growth. "It itches. I'm shaving it as soon as we leave. I always wondered if I could grow one, however, and this definitely proves I can't. "

She giggled. Kenshin hadn't changed a bit, even if he currently looked like an English businessman. She heard his gentle humor in his explanation of the _beard_. "Sir Ken, Kaoru-chan, it's fantastic to see you, but this is so unexpected."

"Unexpected all around." Kaoru sighed. She glanced towards the window, and presumably the city beyond. "We're only here for a few weeks while Jessica's ship is in port. Then it's off to America."

Megumi regarded them soberly for a moment. Kaoru was getting older -- well, they all were, except for Kenshin. Her hair was streaked through with white, and wrinkles lined her eyes. Still, she moved like she was fit and athletic. Megumi guessed that she was still doing kendo; the hands that had grasped her arms a minute before had been callused in the same places.

Kenshin had not aged, unsurprisingly, but he had gained quite a bit weight. It was good weight -- he was healthy, well fed, and when she had hugged him earlier, she had discovered it he was still all muscle and no fat. He _massed _more, and there was a healthy glow to his cheeks that she liked to see. He looked happy -- content, even. She hugged him again. "Gods! I've missed you two!"

"Orooooo!" Kenshin pretended she was squeezing him too hard.

"Megumi-dono," Kenshin indicated the teen, "this is our son, Yukio."

"... has it really been that long?" Megumi regarded the boy with some surprise. She knew it had been thirteen years. Still, it was a shock to find Yukio was her height. He'd been knee-height only yesterday, it seemed. He was lean and lanky, with big hands and feet. Likely, he had a bit more growing to do. He reminded her of an overgrown puppy. "You were still in diapers the last time I saw you!"

The boy gave her wide-eyed look of shock and mild embarrassment.

Megumi giggled. "Still as cute as ever, too."

He turned bright red. She decided he reminded her a great deal of a taller version of Kenshin. Kenshin blushed like that when you teased him, too.

"Mother!" Raiko protested, clearly embarrassed by Megumi's behavior.

"This is my daughter, Raiko," Megumi gestured at her.

"You're thirteen now, right?" Kaoru said, smiling at her. "You look like your father."

Megumi glanced over at her. Raiko was maturing into a leggy, graceful young woman -- definitely a _woman_, despite her boyish garb. Megumi was tall, but Raiko promised to be taller. Already, she stood an inch or two above the heads than most of the boys who dared to court her. Yes, she looked like Sano. Acted like him, too, unfortunately, Megumi thought.

"Yes. I'm thirteen." Raiko met Kaoru's gaze fearlessly. The girl wasn't afraid of anything or anyone.

"Fourteen, in a few months," Megumi said. "Gods! This is such an unexpected and pleasant surprise!"

---------------

Kenshin watched Megumi covertly, over the top of his tea; they'd settled down at a table in the small dining area in the rear of the clinic.

Megumi was growing old. Thirteen years apart, and the change in her was dramatic. She was well over fifty; her hair was nearly white and she moved with a bit of a hitch in her stride. Her face seemed narrower, and the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth were smile lines. The years had been neither kind nor cruel to her; they had simply passed by and wrought changes.

It was easy to ignore the passage of time for people he saw every day, but the last time he'd seen Megumi, she had looked _young_, with only a few grey hairs around her temples.

"Raiko, honey," she said, "Will you run and tell Yahiko and Tsubame to come see me? Don't tell them why, just tell them it's important."

"Mother ..." Raiko tried to protest, clearly not wanting to miss the conversation between the adults.

"Go. And hurry back."

Raiko ran, literally, out the door. She was dressed in a boy's yukata and trousers, and after she was gone, Kenshin said with some amusement, "I think Sanosuke would approve of her."

"She's _all _his," Megumi rolled her eyes. "Sometimes, I think she should have been born a boy. It would be easier. I don't think we'll ever find her a respectable husband. She argues too much."

"She's very pretty," Kaoru said. "I'm sure she'll meet someone and fall in love. _I _found a husband."

Kenshin snorted. "One notes you didn't call me 'respectable'."

Kaoru dimpled at him, a playful grin. "Because that would be a lie."

"Mmm." Megumi shook her head. She'd missed the banter between the two, but this subject sobered her. "Maybe she will."

"Take it from me," Yukio said, sourly, "love's not all it's cracked up to be."

Kenshin glanced at his son in mild alarm. He hadn't mentioned Abby Greenfield since that terrible day, and Yukio's expression now was ... dark. Pained.

"Oh, so cynical, for one so young," Megumi giggled. "_You _could court my daughter, you know."

Kaoru, who had been sipping tea, choked at the suggestion. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and coughed and spluttered.

"What? I'd be pleased to have Sir Ken's son in my family." Megumi smiled at Yukio, who ducked his head and blushed. "I don't understand your reaction, at all."

"It's not about you," Yukio finally managed, though he was blushing very hard and glaring at Kaoru "My family's so wealthy, _everyone _throws their daughters at me -- or, at least, the ugly ones, or the ones who don't have other, better, marriage prospects. Yellow skin here, y'know. She is laughing because I'd just said, earlier this morning, that it was nice being some place where they didn't know me because I wouldn't have to worry about marriage proposals."

Kenshin chuckled, "Aa. It's true, Megumi-dono. The Trevors are quite wealthy. Yukio's managed to dodge multiple offers of marriage."

"... And the one girl I did like? Well." Yukio's eyes grew darker. "That did not work out."

"Her father killed me." Kenshin scratched at his beard. "That's why we're here. We had to leave England; it was a public death, in front of a police officer. We're going to start over in America -- Kaoru and I will be running a shipping office in San Francisco for her, with Yukio to take over in a few years. Jessica and Kenji just wanted us to come to Japan, first, because she wants me to supervise an audit of the books of a few of her factories, and we're picking up a few employees to take to America with us."

"Running a shipping office?" Megumi asked.

Kenshin shrugged. "I'd mentioned plans to find work as a laborer in America, and Jessica had other ideas."

Yukio put in, "She needs people she can trust. America is so far away -- a man could steal her blind and she'd never know it."

"I see." Megumi shook her head. She regarded Kenshin with a keen, sharp gaze. "You've changed."

Kenshin scratched his jaw again. He couldn't wait to shave that beard off! "Not so much."

"He studied a lot of schoolwork with the children." Kaoru offered. Kenshin realized that the _you've changed _comment was in regards to the fact that anyone would consider him suitable for white-collar work, rather than any change in his mannerisms or morals. Well, he _could _read, and write, in two languages. He was very good at math, and at managing money. He'd been helping Kenji sort out the tangled debts and obligations of the Trevor family for years, ever since Kenji's grandfather had died and Kenji had inherited one heck of a messy estate.

"Aa. I never had much education before that, just what Hiko could teach me. And what I learned from books."

"You know Hiko passed away?" Megumi said, quietly.

Kenshin closed his eyes. He'd been expecting that news for over a decade and had honestly been surprised that Hiko had lived so long. "When?"

"Last month. I sent a letter, but likely, it arrived after you left." Megumi hesitated. "I'm sorry to tell you this now. Misao sent a letter and said he was growing very ill -- liver cancer, likely -- and that it was good that he went when he did rather than from the cancer."

"How did he die?" Kaoru asked.

"How do you think?" Megumi's lips twisted up into a sardonic smile.

"Ah." Kenshin nodded understanding. Hiko would not have chosen to live past the point at which life stopped having meaning, nor would he have wanted a slow, painful death from disease. With no family, and few friends, there would have been little to tie him to the world of the living. Certainly, he would not have been concerned about what one _baka deshi _apprentice felt.

He really didn't need to know the details, but Megumi continued, "They found him, on his mountain, when the snows melted. He had refused to come down the mountain in the fall to stay with Misao and Aoshi, and it looked like he had been gone for quite some time when Aoshi went looking for him. He was sitting under a tree by a water fall."

"I know the water fall. And likely, the tree." Kenshin said. It would be the old cherry that overlooked the falls where they had trained so often that he had chosen to die under. "How is everyone else?"

Megumi hesitated, and he didn't like that pause. Kaoru said, perhaps a little sharply, "Who else?"

"Saito's ill. You should see him."

"Aa. I will." Kenshin said. "I had planned to see the old man anyway."

"And ..." Megumi hesitated, "Well, would you like some more tea?"

Kenshin though there was something she wanted to say, but hadn't. He respected that choice, and nodded. "More tea would be fine."

---------------

Raiko returned half an hour later, and pushed the clinic door open with a cheery, "We're back!"

"What's so important you couldn't have her just tell us?" Yahiko's voice sounded a bit annoyed.

"Come here for a moment," Megumi said, without rising.

He walked through the doorway -- and stopped short.

"Kaoru." He breathed, eyes lighting up. Kenshin noted to his dismay, however, that Yahiko was limping, badly, and leaning on a cane.

Tsubame, behind him, crowed, "Kaoru!"

Kenshin regarded his almost-son with concern. Yahiko was far too thin, almost frail. He was leaning heavily on the cane, taking all his weight off one leg.

Yahiko glanced at Kenshin, then gave Yukio a keener look. "Are you Kenshin's youngest boy?"

"That's me, sir," Yukio had risen. He bowed, politely. "I've heard a lot about you. It's good to meet you, that it is."

Yahiko returned the bow. "No need to be overly formal. We're practically brothers."

Kenshin said quietly, drawing Yahiko's attention back to him. "What, no greeting for me? I know it's been thirteen years, but surely, you haven't forgotten this one."

Yahiko looked at him, eyes widening at Kenshin's voice. Kenshin brushed his bangs back from his eyes, knowing the color of his irises would help with the recognition.

"Oh, hell, Kenshin!" Yahiko shouted, making Tsubame and Kaoru both jump. "Gods! I didn't even -- forgive me, I didn't even recognize you!"

"That," Kenshin said with satisfaction, "is the general idea."

"Gods!" Yahiko repeated, leaning on his cane and staring. "Gods, Kenshin, it's so _good _to see you."

-------------

"Your leg is not an injury, is it," Kenshin said. He'd been watching Yahiko all night; the man was too thin, too pale, too frail. He barely looked like Yahiko at all.

"Megumi sent me to the city for x-rays." Yahiko responded, a somewhat cryptic answer, except that it wasn't at all -- not if the problem wasn't an injury.

Yahiko sat on the steps of his home, cane tucked between his knees. They were alone; Kaoru had finally fallen asleep, after several hours of drinking and partying. Megumi and Tsubame were also inside, having engaged in thirteen years of catching-up with her.

"There's ... a growth ... on my spine." Yahiko met Kenshin's eyes with a bleak stare. In the lamplight, he looked ghost pale.

"I'm sorry."

"I had tuberculosis. Almost died from it, twelve years ago. Megumi ... she nursed me 'round the clock, for months. And Tsubame, of course. I lived. Megumi says the growth could be cancer, or it could be tubercular. They don't know. She's been corresponding with doctors all over the world, and nobody has a cure, or a treatment, for either. X-rays, maybe, but the side effects ..." He sighed. "I haven't been able to work for several months. The pain ... you wouldn't believe the amount of laudenum I'm taking these days, Kenshin, when it gets bad. There's nothing they can do in either case."

"Do you ... need money?" Kenshin offered, hesitantly.

"I've enough. That's not a concern." Yahiko wouldn't meet Kenshin's eyes.

Kenshin sat down next to him.

"How do you stand it?" Yahiko asked.

"What?"

"Knowing we'll all die. You love everyone so much, and we're all going to die. Some of us sooner rather than later. But all of us, eventually."

Kenshin blew out a short, sharp breath. Yahiko was asking a question he didn't have a good answer for. "Yahiko, I promised Sano I'd look after his daughter. I will make the same promise to you, for your daughters and your son."

Yahiko made a dismissive wave with his hand. "My daughters, I'm not worried about. All four of them married very well. Good families, solid families. Their husbands are good providers. They have children, too look after them in their old age. I have _twenty _grandchildren, imagine that, Kenshin. _Twenty _grandchildren. One of my daughters has nine kids! Her oldest is eleven. The same age, practically, as when we met. Her youngest is two weeks old!"

Kenshin chuckled. "Busy girl."

"Every year, I swear, another brat. Waaaah, waaaah, waaah." Yahiko sighed. "Her home always sounds like a nursery school. She had _twins _two years ago. Her second set. Twins!"

"I must stop in and see them."

"Take some with you, please, when you go." Yahiko grumbled. "She won't miss them, I promise."

Kenshin laughed.

"But my son ... do look after Shinya. I like Byron, but ... they have no children. When they grow old, there will be no one ..." Yahiko's voice grew softer. "No one to look out for them. And they're so far from home."

Kenshin shook his head. "I don't worry about Shinya and Byron. They are uncles to my grandchildren. They _have _family. Not children of their own, but family. Do not worry about them being alone and elderly someday -- that will never happen."

"That is a relief to know."

"I wish you could go to England and see them there. Shinya's happen, Yahiko. He misses you very much, but he's happy."

"There's a lot of things I wish I could do to." He shifted uncomfortably on the seat.

"You've done well for yourself." Kenshin reached a hesitant hand out and rested it on Yahiko's shoulder. "Yahiko, you've done better than I ever imagined you would. When I found you, you were a half-feral orphan being used by the yakuza. A pickpocket. You couldn't read, and you were hot-tempered, angry, impatient. You had the table manners of a stray dog. Look at the life you've led. You've been a hero, a father, a husband. You've been trusted to be a bodyguard to heads of state and foreign diplomats. I am proud to call you a friend, that I am."

Yahiko sighed. "Maybe."

"Do you want me to stay? For awhile?" Kenshin offered. He meant, _until the end_. Looking at Yahiko, so thin and drawn, he didn't think that would be long.

Yahiko hesitated. Then he said quietly, "I don't need you. I have family who will ... be here. Kaoru and Yukio need you. Besides, it'd be above and beyond the call of duty for you to keep that beard for that long. Looks like you glued a mangy dead cat to your face. People think you're a bum too poor to even afford a razor."

Kenshin snorted a laugh. "It's driving me mad, true. But ... but I _can _stay. Kaoru would love to remain here. We could send a cable to Jessica."

"With _her _eyes how long until someone recognizes her, and once they see her, knows _you_?"

He sighed. Yahiko was right. Kaoru's blue eyes were nearly as distinctive as his hair. They couldn't stay. Kenshin found a pebble on the wooden surface of the steps and chucked it out into the garden, angrily. He didn't say anything.

"Your problem is you care too much." Yahiko reached a hand out, rested it on Kenshin's arm, and squeezed. "We care about you too. I'll be fine. Between Megumi, Tsu, and Tae, and my girls, I'll be _fine_. I do not _need _you, Kenshin. But you want to stay. Because you care about me. And I appreciate that."

Kenshin felt the hot prick of tears at his eyes. He blinked hard, and made them go away. Instead, he said, "When was the last time you've been on vacation?"

Yahiko paused for a long moment, clearly put off balance by the change of subject. "... a long time. Since you were here, last, I think. Why?"

Kenshin fished in the pockets of his itchy, uncomfortable western suit and found the silk bag he carried his money in. They had more in their quarters on the ship -- a lot more. Jessica and Kenji had sent them off with enough money to get started in the New World -- they had enough to buy a home with cash, and pay all their household expenses for quite awhile, with plenty to spare for luxuries. However, he knew the money he had in his wallet was more than Yahiko had likely made in a year. He'd planned on buying furniture in the market tomorrow, for their new home in America. Impulsively, and in a decision he knew that Kaoru would support, he decided they would buy cheaper furniture and live more frugally. It wouldn't hurt him to eat rice and fish rather than the steak and fine wine he'd grown accustomed.

He poured the money out into his hand. "Hold your hand out."

Yahiko did. Likely, he'd been expecting copper coins, and he gasped when he saw the amount of silver and a little bit of gold. "I can't accept this."

"You can." Kenshin tucked the bag back in his coat pocket. "You may be able to afford food, and your home -- but I want you to take those lovely girls of yours, and their children, and your wife, and Megumi and Raiko if they want to come, and take a trip. Have some fun. Enjoy your life. You and I both know how fleeting it can be, that we do. If there's any money left over, eat well, go to the theater, buy fine clothes and pretty things for your wife. _Enjoy _it."

Yahiko was silent for a long moment. "I've never been able to ... do that ... with the family, before."

"I know." Kenshin smiled. "Buy a camera, take pictures, and send them to me. And write more letters. We miss hearing from you."

"Kenshin?"

"Aa?"

"Thank you." Yahiko closed his hand around the money. "_Thank _you."

Kenshin leaned back, hands braced on the porch behind him. "There's a full moon. Look."

"It's beautiful."

"Aa. It is."

---------


	70. Chapter 70

"What is this?" Yukio said, poking at the food in the bowl before him. It was lunchtime; Megumi had invited them over for a meal.

Kenshin glanced over. Megumi had served Yukio a tray with a bowl of rice. The rice had meat on top -- pinkish grey, sliced in long strips.

Megumi set a similar tray down in front of Kenshin, who calmly picked up his chop sticks and took a bite of it. If he told Yukio what it was, likely his son -- raised on a British diet -- would not eat it. The meat was marinated in vinegar, and spiced with chilies, and he grinned. Tasty. It was something he'd missed, and a food that was rather difficult to get in England.

With a dubious frown, Yukio sampled his food. Megumi was watching him curiously.

"Pickled beef?" Yukio guessed, in Japanese. He took another bite. His introduction to natto, the morning before, had not been nearly so smooth, and he'd been subsequently more wary of local food. Kenshin and Kaoru didn't like natto either, and therefore, Yukio had never eaten it before. There were a number of Japanese foods they'd simply done without, either because he and Kaoru didn't miss them enough to import them, or because they didn't transport well and couldn't be grown in England.

Octopus could be pickled and transported in vinegar, but it was low on Kenshin's list of favorite foods, and he hadn't bothered to have it imported.

"Something like that," Kenshin allowed. He hoped Yukio would be politer about the octopus than he had been about the natto; Yukio had taken one very skeptical bite of the natto, and then spit it back out and flatly refused to eat any more. Kenshin sympathized -- personally, he thought that putrid tofu was not actually supposed to be eaten -- but Yukio's reaction had been rude.

Megumi hid a giggle behind her hand.

Raiko asked curiously, "He doesn't know what octopus is?"

Yukio coughed, and reached for the cup of tea on the table in front of him. After swallowing half the liquid he queried, "Octopus?"

"I'll eat it, if you don't want it," Kaoru offered. She held her hand out.

Yukio put his hands protectively around his bowl of pickled octopus. Kaoru's eyes sparkled with amusement. "It's good. It's just ... I thought octopus would taste like fish."

"Octopus tastes like octopus," Raiko said. "You've really never had octopus?"

"He has, I'm sure, but he was too young to remember." Kenshin let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. Yukio, growing up in Britain, did not have Japanese culture ingrained into his soul the way his elder siblings did. He did not want his youngest son offending one of his oldest and dearest friends by being, well, Western in his reactions.

--------------

"Want to go down to the river with me?" Raiko offered, to Yukio, an hour later, after they'd concluded the meal. To Kenshin's relief, Yukio had been on his absolute best behavior -- well, Kaoru had boxed his ears after the natto incident that morning.

Raiko was standing barefoot on one leg, scratching her knee with her toes. Kenshin would have sworn she was a pretty-faced boy rather than a young girl, if he didn't know better -- he was completely unsurprised that Sano's daughter was an unrepentant tomboy. As he watched, she slapped at a mosquito with a callused hand. Her nails were broken and had dirt under them; she appeared to have hacked her hair off at shoulder-length with a knife, and the only reason she could get away with wearing so little clothing was that she had the _figure _of a boy to go with the attitude.

Kenshin was not surprised by the offer; Raiko had been watching Kenshin's son with some curiosity and interest since they'd met. He had, after observing her for a bit, concluded that she might have some very mannish traits but she _was _interested in the opposite sex. And Yukio intrigued her. Likely, he had an exotic air to him.

Yukio hesitated, glancing at his Kenshin. In Victorian England, he would not have been allowed to be alone with a girl. Someone would have supervised. Here, it wasn't exactly proper either -- but Raiko marched to the beat of her own drummer. Likely, her reputation was so badly damaged by her unladylike behavior that it would only be helped if she was seen in the company of a boy with close family ties to a wealth and power.

"Go on." Kaoru said, before Kenshin could say anything. "Have fun."

Megumi smiled at them, after her daughter was gone. "You boy seems very ... well ..."

"Very British," Kaoru sighed. "He was about three when we moved. Everything he's ever known has been Britain. One of the reasons we made this trip here, rather than go directly to America, was to introduce him to home."

"He seems a nice boy." Megumi gazed off in the direction the children went. Wistfully, she said, "I'm honestly not sure if Sano would approve of Raiko, or be appalled by her."

"He'd approve," Kenshin said, with a grin. "This one will tell you how he knows later, over sake tonight. It's a tale best told a little drunk, that it is. Alcohol makes it more believable."

Kaoru, who knew what story he was referring to, laughed.

Megumi said, "Now you have me intrigued."

"Yukio's a lot like Kenshin," Kaoru said, glancing at her husband. Kenshin caught her gaze and saw something more than polite conversation there. Kaoru had things on her mind, but he hadn't exactly figured out _what, _yet.

"Hotheaded and passionate about righting wrongs." Kenshin elaborated, fondly. "And a bit of a little peacock."

"You? A hothead?" Megumi said, incredulously. "Peacock, I can see. I don't think you've ever met a color you didn't like, Sir Ken."

He saw no need to comment on her words about his taste in clothing, since he'd brought the subject up, and as it was, essentially, true. He was currently wearing a lovely turquoise blue shirt, with ruffles, that Jessica had given him. His daughter-in-law indulged his love for bright colors by regularly gifting him with fine outfits, even if Kaoru laughed at him for it.

"As far as hothead goes, you didn't know me when I was about twelve and determined to save the world with my sword. Also, he ... feels ... for other people." Kenshin glanced out the door. "He'll act respectably around your daughter, however. If anything, he's a bit prudish. The British morals are ... repressive."

Megumi snorted. "I'm not worried about your son's behavior. He'd have to deal with you both if he acted improperly ... My daughter, now ... I would dearly love to see that one married off in a year or two."

Kaoru said, "I think they'd make a good pair."

Kenshin nodded agreement. "Jessica wants him to take over the San Francisco branch of the shipping business. However, I've thought it might be better for him to live in Japan. Aki is here, and Aki's family. It would be good for the brothers to live close together. And I'm sure that Marshall Shipping could find a job for him here, too. His fluent command of both languages is incredibly valuable for the company."

Megumi nodded. "I was teasing your son earlier, about my daughter, but -- in all serious honesty -- I'd have no objections to a match between them."

Kenshin smiled. He was pleased Megumi liked the idea as much as he did. "I'll bring the subject up with him."

----------------

Yukio glanced over -- and up -- at the long-legged girl walking next to him. She was a couple inches taller than he was. Yukio, who was used to most English men standing taller than he was by a few inches, had been pleased to discover that he was above average in height among his own people. Raiko was positively a giant among Japanese girls.

"So what's England like?" She said, sounding cheery and curious.

"Green. Cool. Overcast, a lot of the time. It rains all the time." It was steamy, this after noon, and Yukio fought an urge to tug at his collar. He knew he was sweating and part of him envied Raiko her loose linen pants and her top. Her outfit was showing an unseemly amount of skin, but it looked cool. However, he also wanted to blush every time he looked at her. Her yukata revealed her chest clear down to her cleavage, and her arms were bare to the shoulder. Her trousers only came to the middle of her calves and she was wearing only sandles, so he could see her skinny, dusty, mosquito-bitten ankles.

He'd seen his mother wear similar clothing, on occasion, but that was different!

Worse, his mother had made a comment about Raiko's garb earlier, mentioning she had practically lived in boy's clothing as a teenager. And his father had smiled and said his mother had been _sexy _in a yukata. And had offered -- quite seriously -- to go buy her a few outfits. And Megumi had then chimed in, in a teasing voice, that the clothing had always suited her, for all that she was more boy than girl.

That comment had been made with a flicking glance at Kaoru's chest.

Kaoru had responded tartly, and to the point, "At least I won't sag."

Megumi, a good bit more endowed than Kaoru, had hidden a grin behind her hand. Kenshin had put both hands in the air in a gesture of surrender and self-defense and had said he was not joining this discussion.

Yukio had wanted to _die_.

Worse, Raiko had heard it. And she had laughed uproariously, with evident glee at someone getting the upper hand on her mother in a battle of barbs.

He glanced over at her again. Her hair was slightly messy, and she had a scratch across one cheek. For lack of other things to say, he asked, "What happened to your face?"

She reached up and touched the scratch. "Huh. I'm not sure. Maybe when I fell out of that tree yesterday morning."

"Why were you climbing a tree?"

"To jump out of it into the river. We could go swimming, if you want, today. It's going to be warm."

"Umm. Do you have a bathing costume?"

She gave him a funny look. He'd used the English word and realized there wasn't one that he knew in Japanese. "Baaathing cost-ume?" She said, comically drawing out the vowels.

"Never mind." He suspected that she didn't. He did not want to know if she would swim in her underclothes, or get her all her scanty clothing wet. He would be astonished if she went home to change. "I think I'll skip the swimming."

"Oh. Okay."

"We could go horseback riding," he offered. "Is there a stable near here, where we could rent horses?"

"I've never ridden a horse. We rent a carriage sometime if we're going on a trip."

"Oh." Her mother was a physician and they had a nice home; he had assumed she was well off. Most of his peers, both boys and girls, rode. And she was such a tomboy, he was honestly surprised to find that she didn't. "I'm ..." What, sorry? He didn't know what to say.

"You ride horses, in England?"

This was a safe discussion, so he elaborated, "My sister-in-law keeps a stable of hunters. She has -- had -- me ride a few every day to keep them in shape. Pays me for it. I've been saving the money up since I was eight years old. I've been investing it, and stuff." He grinned. "I have a horse of my own, too -- he's great when we go hunting."

"Hunting? What do you hunt?"

That hadn't translated very well. "Ride to hunt? Foxes and dogs?"

"Oh."

"It's a lot of fun. We go really fast and jump over fences and creeks. It's exciting."

"I see." She clearly didn't. "I don't like horses. We had a team run away with us when I was little. Something scared them and they took off and the carriage wrecked. My mom broke her arm."

"Oh." He could see how that would be scary. "It's different when you ride. You're in control."

"Until the horse decided you're not."

"Then you just hold on until you can _get _in control again." Yukio shrugged. "I can't wait to get to America. I want to go on a horseback ride all over the West. It sounds really interesting."

"I've read about cowboys and Indians. My mom bought me some books by Louis L'Amour."

"My father wandered all over Japan, when he was young. For ten years. I want go all over the _world_. Start with America and just see what's out there. I've been all over England already, and even to Spain." He started to scratch at his sweaty woolen suit, caught himself, and put his hands in his pockets instead. "I might start with the American West, and then maybe Alaska. I could see Russia, too, maybe Mongolia and China. Work my way down through Asia ... Australia sounds fascinating."

"How are you going to pay for all that traveling?"

"I'll find odd jobs." He shrugged. "I speak English and Japanese, and a bit of Spanish and French and a lot of Latin. Father Darius says I've got a good head for languages. And I can work with my hands, and I'm not afraid of blisters and hard labor. An' I've got a bit of money put by. My father didn't have _anything _except the clothes on his back"

She sighed. "I wish I was a boy. I'd love to go on a journey like that."

He gave her a shocked look. "It would be too dangerous for a girl!"

"Dangerous for a boy, too," she pointed out. She sounded annoyed. "I can take care of myself, anyway. And anyway, your folks want you to work for your sister-in-law."

Yukio scowled and scuffed his foot in the dirt. "It will be a good job. Lots of money. And Jessica says she needs me." He changed the subject. "So, is your mother teaching you to be a doctor too ...?"

Before she could answer, there was a shout from an alley, "Raiko-chan, Raiko-chan, you got a _boyfriend_?"

"Looks like a gaijin, no less!"

Yukio spun about, shocked by the stranger boys' words. Then four older, larger boys came spilling out of an alley, and Raiko said, low and annoyed, "Let me handle this ..."

"Oh, like _hell_." He wasn't about to let the girl fight while he stood by.

-------------

Saito had seen a lot of unusual things in his life.

The Sagara girl, in a fight, was not one of them. The Sagara girl, in a fight, _winning_, wasn't even unusual. He suspected she only picked about half the fights she got into, but she beat her opponents in almost all of them. Even when there were multiple assailants -- as in this case, she had four older boys after her -- a wise man would bet on Sanosuke's daughter.

He remembered seeing her when she was still a tiny toddler, punching at an imaginary friend. When he'd asked who she was fighting, she'd answered, "The invisible tall man. He laughs when I hit him."

Somewhere age five or six, the imaginary friend had become real opponents. He'd seen her take down boys years older than she was, and never cry over a bloody nose or a blacked eye. Eventually, he'd taken her aside and taught her a bit of hand to hand -- though she honestly hadn't needed much training. He'd sworn her to secrecy -- Gods, he'd never hear the end of it if anyone knew he'd taken pity on Sanosuke Sagara's little brat and taught her to fight like a man. He'd stopped the lesson, when she'd expressed an interest in swordplay one time too many. With her hot temper and impulsive nature, he'd had no desire nor inclination to put sharp steel in her hands.

In this case, her attackers were in their late teens to Raiko's scrawny, scabby-kneed thirteen years. Shameful, Saito thought, that older teens would pick on a little girl. Foolish, to pick Raiko as a target. Hadn't they heard the stories about what she could do people who messed with her?

Saito recognized the small band of toughs -- they were essentially Yakuza-in-the-making. He didn't like them, and he'd boxed the ears of the eldest of the group a year ago, after the little thug had mouthed off to him. The teenager had thought that one old, stooped, grey-haired man would not be able to fight back. He'd been very wrong.

Saito might be old, but he wasn't helpless. And he'd been pleased by the chance to prove this fact. It had been a very long time since he had been in a fight, and it had been a short, sweet, efficient victory.

No, he reflected, it was not at all unexpected to see Sagara Raiko in a fight with those four idiots. Likely, they'd decided that old men were too difficult to harass and had moved onto apparently easier picking in the form of one misfit, outcast little girl.

The boy with her was unusual.

He was slim, in a sort of gangling, teenage, not-quite-grown way. However, he didn't move awkwardly. Saito had seen young men who moved like this child did before, but not in several decades. His poise, and grace, indicated to Saito that he was a trained martial artist. He had an unmistakable swordsman's _ki_ -- clear, brilliant, focused.

The young fighter had a short pony tail pulled back with a silver barrette, and he was dressed in western style trousers and a long-sleeved shirt. He had a necklace at his throat, and rings on his fingers, and expensive looking leather western-style boots. Saito concluded he was wealthy, and of unorthodox upbringing.

He had a wooden stick in one hand, and he was using it to very good effect against a larger, older boy. The older boy had a length of lead pipe in his hand, which should have outgunned the boy's stick.

Saito raised an eyebrow, watching.

The boy was good enough with that stick that Saito suspected he had a lot of training with a lightweight wooden bokken. A suspicion formed in Saito's mind. It had been a long time since he'd seen anyone fight with a bokken as a primary weapon, but he'd known this style of swordsmanship before. The child's footwork, the way he held the stick, even the look of grim determination on his face -- all was familiar.

The boy finished his fight in seconds, swinging that stick so fast it whistled, and breaking it across the shoulder of his assailant. The larger teen fell forward, clutching an obviously fractured collar bone.

Raiko had a solid grip on another thug; she flipped him over her shoulder and he hit the ground with a grunt. She kicked him in the head, hard enough to break his nose and possibly his jaw. Saito thought, _Good for her_. He hoped the boy choked on his own blood as just punishment for assaulting Raiko.

Raiko and her friend were not even breathing hard yet, but they now had two attackers left. Saito watched, unimpressed, as the two men tried to rush the boy from opposite sides, while ignoring the Sagara girl. Both had pipes, and the one behind the boy brought his down in a whistling arc at the kid's head.

The boy somehow sensed the weapon, and caught it with his upraised, crossed wrists. Simultaneously, he kicked forward in a lightning fast strike, nailing the other thug in the face, and sending him stumbling towards Raiko.

Raiko tripped him, booted him in the buttocks, and sent him head-first into a wall. There was a crunch like a melon being dropped on the pavement, and the thug collapsed, unmoving, on the ground.

Meanwhile, the boy had gracefully whacked his bad guy upside the head with the stick, hard enough that he wasn't getting up any time soon.

Saito lit a cigarette. He was moderately impressed, not so much by the fact that the two children had won the fight, but by the fact that they'd done so with a great deal of ease.

"I could have handled them," Raiko said, to the boy. She sounded annoyed that he'd joined the battle. Saito wished he'd seen what had started things.

The boy shrugged, clearly a little annoyed by her proclamation that she didn't need his help. He said, sounding irritated, "I haven't had a good fight in three or four months. I needed the practice. But next time, I'll leave them all to you."

Saito cleared his throat. "Boy. I have not seen anyone fight using Kamiya Kasshyin Ryu in more than a decade."

Raiko glanced over, saw him, and then bobbed a quick bow. "Good morning, Fujita-san."

"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?" He walked closer.

"I'm Yukio," the boy said, speaking for himself. With considerable wariness, he added, "My mother and brother taught me. They used to run a school here. You may have seen their students."

"And your mother, I believe, if she is Kamiya Kaoru." Saito made a guess as to the kid's identity. He vaguely remembered Kenshin and the Kamiya woman adopting a bunch of orphans, though for the life of him, he'd never understood _why_. He didn't remember their names, but this was likely the youngest of the lot. They were from Kenshin's village, and he saw a certain resemblance to Kenshin in the child's features. He wasn't sure if it was a family resemblance -- Kenshin said he had been found as an infant -- or if it was his expressions.

"Hello, Fujita-san," a light, gentle voice said behind him. There was amusement in that voice, and greeting, and only the barest hint of suspicion.

Saito whirled in surprise, astonished to hear _that _man again. Kenshin's voice was nearly as distinctive as his hair; he sounded like his voice had never even broken when he was a teen. Saito had assumed Kenshin had left Japan forever, in a rather cowardly, but understandable, retreat.

And then, when he actually saw Kenshin, he found himself smirking. He couldn't help it. He had been expecting to see the man he'd faced across the chaos and blood of the bakumatsu. He had no doubt that Kenshin's story about being immortal was true; he had been anticipating seeing exactly the man he'd known before, untouched by time's ravages. Kenshin would always be _Kenshin_ -- young, strong, pure. Deep down, the Battousai he had known would always exist, he had thought.

However, there was nothing of that cold, deadly young samurai from Kyoto in the rather preposterous figure facing him -- perhaps the Battousai was still there, but he was so buried as to be unrecognizable. And there was very little of the smiling young peacock with danger lurking just under the surface, either, that Saito had come to respect if not exactly _like_ in Tokyo.

With real and genuine amusement, Saito asked, "What did you do, glue a dead rat to your face, Himura-san? Or should I call you Kamiya-san now?"

Kenshin ignored the comment on his beard, with his usual dignity. "Kamiya Shinta, if you would please oblige this one. Like you, I find a name not my own to be convenient, and it protects those I care about. -- Fujita-san, this is my son, Himura Yukio. Yukio, this is Fujita Goro. You've heard Kaoru and I speak of him, certainly."

Yukio bowed. "I did not realize you were the friend of which my cousin -- ah, father has often spoken." Belatedly, Yukio corrected himself. He was very used to introducing Kenshin as a cousin, as Kaoru's nephew.

"Cousin?" Saito frowned at Kenshin.

"Fujita-san knows who I am, Yukio," Kenshin said, quietly. "We've known each other a very long time, that we have."

"Hai." Saito inclined his head in acknowledgement of that fact. "And somehow, I've never gotten around to taking your head."

Yukio said something short, sharp, and alarmed in English. Kenshin responded mildly, in Japanese, "No, he's not like me. Though I am not surprised he knows how to kill me, given our history. Yukio, go on now. I believe I'd like to speak to Fujita-san alone, for a bit."

The boy hesitated.

"Go," Kenshin said, not unkindly. "It's a warm day. Go swim in the river or something."

"Yes, father," Yukio murmured, finally, though he clearly wanted to stay and listen.

-----------------

They walked along the shore, one old man -- and one old man who only seemed young. Kenshin felt ancient; worn and tired.

"Your boy is a good one," Saito said, finally. "That _girl _is a wild, uncouth child."

"You like her," Kenshin said, with a smile. He glanced over at Saito. The former Shinsengumi was grey-haired and aged, face deeply lined with wrinkles. He was also too thin, pale, and he moved tensely, as if he was in pain somewhere. Kenshin's smile faded. He had mentally been counting the years, and was not entirely unsurprised to see the passage of time on the faces of his friends. He had told himself to expect it.

However, somehow, he had not pictured Saito changing. Somehow, Saito wasn't supposed to be growing old.

Saito snorted, in reaction to Kenshin's words, and that was a familiar noise.

"You do. You liked her father, too." Kenshin tried favoring Saito with a rurouni grin, mischievous and merry.

Saito's snort, this time, held more amusement. He would go to his grave, Kenshin figured, without ever admitting to fond sentiments for Sagara Sanosuke. He said blandly, "That expression doesn't quite match that beard, Himura-san."

Saito had a point. Kenshin laughed openly. "I will never be more glad than the day I can shave this mess off. I'm scaring children, and my wife won't kiss me."

Saito made a noise that sounded like a growl of disapproval. Kenshin grinned again.

"I do not envy you," Saito said, after a moment more.

"I never expected you to." Kenshin glanced over and up at him. Saito growled something under his breath. Kenshin scratched his beard.

They walked in silence for a bit, both of them sober now. He couldn't think of anything else to say to this stooped old man who had once been one of his mightiest foes. Apparently, Saito didn't have much else to say, either.

But he thought they understood each other. And that, perhaps, was worth more than any polite conversation they might have had.

When he parted ways, he bowed formally, and said, "Sayonara, Saito-san."

"Sayonara, Himura-san." Saito's farewell was equally grave, and final. "May we meet again as allies in another life."

"Hai," Kenshin said, simply. Their eyes met, briefly, in a level gaze. He blinked first, seeing no point in getting in a staring contest with the old man. Saito retrieved a cigarette from his pocket, then, and lit it with a match.

Kenshin left him, standing alone, smoking. They would not see each other again; he knew that in his heart. Saito believed it, too. Perhaps it was for the best; they had never been friends, after all.

He turned back, when he was half a block away. Saito was still standing in the shade of a tree, cigarette to his lips. He echoed softly, "May we meet again, in another life, Saito-san."

-------------


	71. Chapter 71

Author's note: Citrus warning. This chapter can be safely skipped, if lemons bother you.

--------------------

Kaoru was kneeling on the futon, and she reached up and pulled the pins out of her hair. Her hair tumbled down her back, and she ran a hand through it, loosening it. Once she'd had raven locks that reached to her waist. Now, her hair was more white than black; still, it was just as long, and just as thick. When Kenshin saw her, his breath caught in his throat for just a moment. He wanted to run his hands through that hair. In England, he rarely saw her with it down, though when they met in the darkness at night, he felt it -- long and heavy and silken.

He stepped into the room and pulled the door shut after him. They were alone; Megumi had fallen asleep earlier, and Raiko had hauled a mildly protesting Yukio off to "catch fireflies." Kenshin wasn't sure if the girl was still child enough to be truly interested in catching insects, or if she had set her sights on capturing a much larger prey. In either case, he wasn't going to interfere. It wouldn't hurt Yukio to chase bugs -- and it wouldn't harm Yukio to be caught by a girl he could actually marry and settle down with, either.

He liked Raiko. And he figured they were old enough to get to know each other, and if there was any interest there between them, he'd certainly encourage them to pursue it. He liked tomboys, and he thought she'd be a good match for his son.

The tomboy he'd married decades ago looked over her shoulder at him, then rose. Her hair tumbled down her back. He caught his breath and grew hard, just watching her walk towards him.

"No servants lurking," she murmured. "It's just us. No sneaking about."

He'd slept the last two nights in Kaoru's bed -- this was something he had not done in thirteen years.

"Just us," he agreed, his voice coming out an octave lower than he'd intended.

She reached for the obi of the kimono that she'd been cheerfully wearing all day. She'd looked beautiful in it -- like the girl he'd married, so long ago. He stilled her fingers with his hands, and then untied the knot himself. The fabric pooled around her feet as she slipped out of the silk, and helped her out of the linen shift she had on underneath as well -- his help was necessary here; the slip was from the collection of western clothing she'd brought from Britain, and it buttoned up the back. She couldn't quite reach all the buttons anymore.

That, too, tumbled off.

He pulled her to him, then, arms going around her waist, mouth descending on hers. It felt so good to hold her.

Suddenly, she pushed her hands up between them and took a step back. At first, he thought she was protesting his hated beard, and he expected to see her eyes dancing with mischief, but her eyes were serious and somber. She said simply, "I'm getting old, Kenshin."

He blinked, at that.

"Megumi's crack, about me being built like a boy, and me teasing her about sagging ..." she glanced down at her chest. "I'm ... well, I'm not _young _anymore."

Despite their joking earlier, she was sagging just a little. But even at well over fifty years of ages Kaoru was still toned and athletic. It wasn't like she was tucking them in her obi to keep them from flapping about. Her fitness had helped keep things where they were supposed to be, rather than migrating downhill.

"Do you think I'm pretty, still?" she bit her lip and gazed up at him.

_Up _at him. Once upon a time, they'd nearly been the same height -- he'd been taller by only about two inches. Somehow, she'd lost another inch or two -- or maybe three. She never _seemed _tiny to him, but she was. And her blue eyes were wide, and he was surprised to see tears brimming there. What had brought this on?

"Megumi looks so _old_," she whispered. "And Tae and Tsubame and Yahiko. We're all getting to be old men and women. Me, too. And I hate it. I'm sixty, Kenshin. I don't feel sixty, but I am."

He moved away from her and surveyed her gravely. She had wrinkles, of course, though her stomach was flat. Kaoru had loose skin hanging off her upper arms, and her hands had as many wrinkles as muscles. And the skin on her neck was sagging a little.

He continued his somber scrutiny. She was muscular and fit, and very feminine -- others might tease Kaoru about being boy-like, but he never had. You'd have to be _blind _to miss the way her eyes sparkled with girlish glee when her lively sense of humor was triggered, or the swell of her hips that was all woman. He glanced down at those hips, then moved his attention to her belly button -- he wanted to kiss it, to make her giggle and squirm, because he knew she was ticklish there.

His gaze drifted upwards, lingering on a breast he could cup in one hand. He knew how she would react if he gently rolled the nipple between his fingers, the noises she would make, the way she would arch her back into his touch. His eyes fell on her bare collarbone -- he wanted to kiss that, too.

And then he looked farther down, at the hands that knew how to touch _him _-- she could bring him to shuddering release in seconds, or make it last for hours of the sweetest torture. Those hands were skilled, and loving, and gentle and rough and firm and feather-light all in turns. He studied her fingers, that stroked him. Nails, that dug into his back when he thrust hard inside her. And then he looked up at her mouth, which kissed and sucked and licked and nibbled. And which smiled and laughed, and scolded and teased, and that was all part of the whole.

Down again, not at her chest but at her heart -- which loved him and trusted him and _knew _him. And even though she _knew _him -- she knew his darkness, unnatural secrets, and closely held fears and failures and all, she still loved him. She loved him more than anything else in the world.

Blue eyes met his. Her lips were quivering, and those eyes were brimming with tears. "Ken... shin. Kenshin, say something."

_I don't care what you look like_ wasn't the right answer. It implied he didn't care, and also that she _was _getting old. He'd always thought her beautiful; she would assume _I don't care_ meant that she wasn't anymore. And she didn't want to be told some silly platitude, either. "You're as pretty as the day I married you ..." would be a weak, shallow response. She'd likely accuse him of lying if he tried that.

"Say something ..." she whispered.

He wasn't good with words, not really. Not when it came to his own heart. He ventured hesitantly, "Kaoru, I wish I was growing old with you ..."

He'd meant to say more. He wanted to force out soothing words, even though he couldn't think of anything that would ease this pain in her heart. However, by some chance he'd found the right thing to say. Pure dumb luck, he thought, but he saw the grief in her eyes soften. She hiccupped back a sob and cut him off before he said anything else. "I wish you were too. It's horrible of me. It's terrible and selfish and awful. But I wish you were getting old too, Kenshin."

"No, Kaoru. It's not selfish." He brushed her hair back from her eyes with his fingers. "Immortality is a curse. You are not selfish for wishing that I be a normal man. I wish I was, too."

She stumbled into his arms, then, burying her face in his shoulder, and crying. "I wish you were normal, Kenshin. Gods, I want that so badly for you."

_She understood_. Something in his heart lessened, too, at her words. Once upon a time, she'd wished she could be Immortal. Now, she knew he did not see this as any sort of blessing or miracle.

He made love to her that night with gentle tenderness. And then he held her close, unable to sleep despite the comfort her presence always brought to him.

She was growing old.

And he wasn't.

Time passed so quickly.

Somehow, her words had reminded him of her mortality. She had been soothed, but he knew they only had a few scant decades left together even with the best of luck. They had been married over forty years and that time seemed to have passed in a twinkling.

Would the lesser span of years they had remaining to them pass by at the same swift rate of speed?

It was too warm a night to sleep cuddled together, particularly after a bit of exertion. She lay on the futon next to him with the sheets shoved down to her waist. He watched her sleep, and treasured the moment. Someday, he thought with both resignation and bitter, miserable knowledge ... someday, she'd be gone, and he'd be alone.

After a moment, despite the warm night, he rolled over and curled up against her. She murmured something and stroked his hair sleepily.

"Sorry," he said, apologizing for waking her.

"G'sleep," she murmured, rolling over so that they were spooned together.

He reached down and tugged the sheet up so that it covered both of them. Then he put his arm around her. He didn't think he was going to sleep that night, but eventually, he drifted off into restless dreams.


	72. Chapter 72

Kenshin carried a small chest full of tea up the gang plank and walked across the slightly rocking deck to the cabin he shared with Yukio. For appearance's sake, Kaoru had her own quarters -- something he was regretting more and more after the two weeks he'd spent in Kaoru's bed, while staying with Megumi. In the close confines of the ship he didn't even dare sneak into her room after dark. It was lonely, laying awake at night and thinking of her.

_Soon, _he thought, _we will have a home of our own and we will _not _have servants living there. _

He deposited the chest of fine teas -- a gift from Tae -- under the lower bunk. The cabin was tiny, but he'd lived in far worse during the ten years he'd traveled alone. There had been times when "home" -- if he had a home, and wasn't living under a bridge -- was simply a bed in a rooming house.

Yukio, by contrast, had been complaining vigorously about the tiny cabin ever since they'd left England. Yukio had grown up with his own room in a sprawling three story country manor. He'd been dismayed to learn he would need to share with his father, and he described the size of the cabin as, "not much bigger than a water closet." Which was, perhaps, accurate.

He sighed, and then headed back to the dock to oversee the loading of their purchases. He had bought far less furniture than he'd planned, since he had given so much money to Yahiko, but they had selected a few nice pieces -- a lacquered cabinet, some low tables, and a beautiful desk. There was also a gorgeously carved wardrobe and matching chest. And they'd bought a selection of household items -- pots and pans and futons, knives and plates and lanterns: everything to start a new household. They were _things_, he thought, with a vague unease at owning too much expensive property, but they were beautiful things, and they would make Kaoru happy.

He'd purchased a phonograph, as well; Kaoru didn't know about that. He planned to surprise her with it, when they bought their home in San Francisco.

Besides the wooden crates containing their own property, the ship was also transporting fine porcelain and box after box of Japanese artwork. And more furniture, though not so nice as the pieces they had purchased. Apparently, there was a craze for all things oriental in America, even if the Americans seemed to have a profound dislike for the Japanese themselves.

Both because of what had happened with Abby and her father, and because of American sentiments towards the Japanese, he had a whole new set of papers, and a new name he'd need to start using in America: Kenneth Shin, supposedly Kaoru's nephew, and the son of a deceased American man. His history, and papers, had been provided by an Immortal lawyer that Darius knew, and at Darius's suggestion, "Ken Shin" had been born in New York City and was legally an American citizen by birth. There were moves afoot to restrict the purchase of land in California to only those who could legally be citizens -- in a deliberate attempt to stop Japanese from purchasing property. So, Ken Shin was a citizen.

Only half jokingly, he'd told the lawyer to let him know if anyone ever tried to take his head. The man, and his apparent multitude of connections, promised to be a _useful _acquaintance. The lawyer had responded, with an amused laugh, "Nobody would kill me. I'm too useful to _everyone_."

Outside on the dock, small crane lifted the crates on board. He watched, approvingly, as the operator very gently lowered the cargo through a hole in the deck. The ship had a crew of close to thirty men; they very efficiently hauled stuff off to be stowed safely in the depths of the hold.

"Excuse me," a voice said, in English. "Are you Mr. Shin?"

Kenshin had sensed the people approaching behind him, but he was surprised to hear English. He responded, as he turned, "I am Kenneth Shin." He added, "I don't believe I have the pleasure of your name."

That was a memorized phrase; he still struggled with grammar. The man, however, visibly relaxed in apparent reaction to Kenshin's seemingly decent English. He was tall, dressed very well, and his wife beside him looked wealthy and far younger than her husband. He looked to be in his early sixties -- distinguished, with a grizzled beard and a full head of greying hair. The man said, "We heard you were going to America. I'm afraid I'm in a spot of trouble, and I'm looking for a ride."

Kenshin regarded the couple warily. They were wealthy; you could tell that simply by their dress. He was skeptical of the rich, from long acquaintance with them in London. And the man had not provided his name in response to Kenshin's query -- though he sounded frazzled enough that it was possible that he had not heard Kenshin's words. Kenshin said, "This ship going to the United States; our next port is Hawai'i, next San Francisco."

"Do you have room for three more?" The man said, sounding eagerly hopeful and more than a little desperate. They were American, he thought, or possibly Canadian -- he wasn't all that good at telling English accents apart.

"Please to ask the Captain Yamada." Kenshin had figured that chain of command out pretty quickly. Jessica might own the ship, and Kaoru might be her mother-in-law and he her 'cousin in law' but Captain Yamada's word was law on board the steamer. Keeping in Shiro's good graces was vital for peace on board. It had taken Yukio and Kaoru a bit longer to figure this out. She was captain first, and a friend second.

"Our ship foundered in a storm." The man glanced at his wife. She obediently made a face. He continued, "It was terrible. We made it into port, barely, and now it's stuck here in this barbaric land for months for repairs."

_Barbaric land_. Kenshin silently winced. He'd read enough newspapers to have heard about _yellow peril _and the general opinion of Westerners -- particularly American Westerners -- towards his people. He forced a polite smile onto his face, and tried very hard not to respond with annoyance at the man's rudeness. He also hoped that the man had the smarts not to express that opinion to the captain; Shiro might just decide they weren't worth the trouble.

"They said you were going to America." The man continued. "Please, sir. We can pay, and well."

"Talk to captain." Kenshin gestured ahead of him, up the gangplank. He emphasized his accent a bit. "He decide."

"Do you think he'll say yes?"

"Up to captain." Kenshin said, with a brief bow. "His decision."

------------

The man, his wife, and the man's teenage daughter were installed later that day in one of the handful of cabins on deck. They complained about not being able to get two cabins, but there was only one empty -- and the captain had rather rudely refused to allow Kaoru and Kenshin to give up one of theirs even when they offered. Kenshin figured he and Kaoru were small enough people to share a bunk, but Shuri told them privately, "Man's an idiot. I want to make sure he understand Kaoru outranks him. Ken-san, be careful around him. I only took him because I feel sorry for his wife and daughter."

Like many freight steamers, the Lady Fair took paying passengers on a regular basis -- it was extra income. The cabin that they now occupied had been used by an elderly British dowager traveling to join her expatriate family on the long journey between England and Japan.

"They sure complain a lot," Yukio observed, after the ship was under way. He was seated crosslegged on the deck, his long hair whipped loose and wild by the sea breeze as they chugged out of the harbor. Moments earlier, they had been doing katas on the deck. Kenshin was always surprised by Yukio's ability to go from intense to relaxed in moments.

Kaoru scowled in the direction of the Timothy family -- Annabelle, Augustus and their daughter Melody. Kenshin had learned their names from Shiro. "And about nothing. The food is _not _that bad. Particularly by British standards."

"Yeah, you weren't cooking it." Yukio leaned back against the railing. Behind and below him, waves slapped the hull of the ship with a steady, hollow rhythm. "And the fresh fruit salad was excellent."

Kaoru, also seated on the deck, stuck her tongue out at her son.

"I suspect they're used to higher standards," Kenshin said, tolerantly. The Timothys struck him as very wealthy; they were very well dressed and they'd brought so much luggage on board that the captain had insisted on charging them a substantial extra amount for the cargo. Much of it seemed to be clothing from France and England; Kenshin was a little puzzled by that. He had planned to buy outfits locally in America, to better fit in.

"So are we," Kaoru shrugged. "And we're not complaining about anything."

Kenshin said, pointedly, "You're complaining now, that you are."

She opened her mouth, then shut it, then opened it again, then said, "Mou! You're right."

"The girl's cute." Yukio spoke up suddenly.

Both his parents gave Yukio keen looks. He flushed. "Well, she is."

"Sagara Raiko's cute too," Kenshin observed. "And her mother actually likes me."

Kaoru reached out and swatted Kenshin on the side of the head, hard, without saying a thing.

"Oro!" He staggered backwards. "I say that on our son's behalf! She's thirteen, Kaoru, that she is!"

Yukio giggled.

"Hentai," Kaoru grumbled under her breath, though her eyes were sparkling with amusement.

"Yeah, Dad. You're a pervert."

Kenshin sobered. "Seriously, Yukio, please stay away from Mr. Timothy's daughter. It's a small ship and a long trip. I do not wish to have her parents angry at you, and at us, for weeks."

Yukio looked sharply away from his father, shoulders suddenly hunching. "It's not fair."

"What's not fair?" Kenshin said, somewhat sympathetically.

"I wish I wasn't Japanese! If I was English, they would be begging me to court her. My brother's a _Lord_ and my father's a war hero and my mother's the daughter of a samurai. And my sister-in-law is one of the wealthiest women in England!" Fists balled, he glared at both of them.

"You're also the orphan son of poor peasants, that you are," Kenshin said, with milder reproof than he normally would have delivered after such an arrogant speech. "And your mother was once so desperately poor she couldn't afford food to eat, your father lived under bridges, and your brother was an orphaned gaijin."

Yukio lunged to his feet and ran off across the deck, towards the front of the ship.

Kaoru started to go after him. Kenshin caught her eye and shook his head. "Let him go. We cannot change the realities of this world. It is _true _that there is unfairness in the fact that his prospects for romance are limited. And he is still mourning Abby."

Abby had refused to speak to him, after her father had 'killed' Kenshin. There had been a trial scheduled; Kenshin suspected that even had he 'lived' Greenfield would still be sentenced to swing. Kenji and Jessica were trying to get his sentence commuted to hard labor; Kenshin hadn't heard yet what the outcome of that was. Likely, there would be a cable waiting for them in America with the trial results.

The Japanese government had gotten involved, when it heard that a Japanese citizen had been 'killed', and was demanding an execution. Darius was preaching for forgiveness.

Kenshin felt horribly, absurdly, guilty about the whole mess. _Intent, _he thought, should matter as much as outcome. Greenfield had intended to kill him, and had, actually, done so. That he came back to life hours later was a fluke of fate. Had he shot a mortal, the mortal would be dead. And Kenshin was trying hard to convince himself that mattered more than his Immortality. Punishment was definitely deserved. In truth, even had he been mortal and lived, Greenfield might still have been executed for his offenses.

Abby somehow blamed Yukio.

Who, likely, blamed himself.

Kenshin figured ultimately, the person to blame was Abby's father. Yukio had done absolutely nothing wrong, and had, in fact, been upstanding and respectable. _Nobody _could fault Yukio's behavior, except those people who insisted he'd been acting above his station in life.

_I wish I wasn't Japanese_! He'd screamed.

Kenshin stared after his son, sorrow in his heart. Suddenly, he regretted knocking the boy down a peg. He hated to hear Yukio brag about his family, but he realized that the boy's words stemmed from a profound sense of hurt and loss of self-worth. Yukio was wounded so bad, and he didn't know how to fix it.

Despite Megumi's point-blank offer, and both his and Kaoru's encouragement, he'd shown no interest in courting Raiko. Raiko had been clearly intrigued; Yukio, by contrast, had seemed almost oblivious to her interest. She would, he thought, be a perfect match for his son -- and Kenshin suspected that the solace Yukio would find in a relationship with a girl who was as much of an awkward misfit as he was would help him greatly.

Kenshin had assumed he was still mourning Abby, but now, he wondered if this wasn't a deeper issue.

He, himself, could not imagine not wanting to be Japanese. If any Westerner had an issue with his Asian heritage, Kenshin figured it was _their _problem, not his. This meant that a significant percentage of the world, by his definition, had problems, but such was life.

He glanced over at his wife. Kaoru met his gaze and rolled her eyes, clearly unimpressed by his outburst. Kenshin reflected that he _did _have a wife; a lot of Yukio's anger had to do with interactions with his peers. Westerners looked down on him because he was Japanese; Japanese looked down on him because he was 'too white' -- he had been raised in a western household and despite Kenshin's attempts to educate him on Japanese culture, his knowledge of Japan was no more than academic.

His body language, slight English accent, his preference for English foods and English culture and dress -- it marked him as different.

"I'd hoped he would like Raiko," Kaoru said, quietly. "They'd be a good match."

"Yes," Kenshin agreed, but knew there was nothing he could do if Yukio wasn't interested. He rose, quietly, and said, "Excuse me, Kaoru."

"Where are you going?"

He waved a hand in the general direction of his face, and his scraggly beard. "I am going to shave."

------------------

The girl was about sixteen. His age, or perhaps a little older.

Yukio watched her. It was late evening -- not quite dark, but the sun was over the horizon. She stood at the bow of the ship, back straight, long blond hair whipping in the breeze.

"Hey," he said, joining her.

She glanced over at him.

"I'm Yukio Himura."

"You're Chinese?" She said, with a sniff.

"Japanese," he corrected, a bit sharply. In a friendlier tone, he continued, "But I was raised in England. My sister-in-law owns this ship."

She glanced down at the deck under her feet. "Oh. I didn't know Orientals owned it."

"It's rather complicated. My father raised -- adopted -- my brother when we believed he was an orphan. He was an orphan. But his grandfather's of the peerage -- a viscount. And he married Jessica Marshall, who owns the ships. And I was raised up in England, because of that. My brother's a lot older than I am."

"You sound British." She was regarding him now with her head tilted to one side.

"Yeah." He hesitated. "I speak English better than Japanese. I'm a British subject, legally, anyway. We were here for a holiday, and now we're going on to San Francisco. I'm to go to school there, and then Jessica wants me to run her shipping office someday. She puts a lot of trust in me, I think."

"That seems like a big job."

"Yes. What is your name, anyway?"

"Melody Timothy."

"Miss Timothy," he said, "where are you from?"

"We've been living in France, and Russia before that, and America when I was little. Now we're moving to Arizona. My father bought a farm. We're going to raise cotton and hay." She made a face, clearly not happy about these plans.

"That sounds exciting. I would like to see Arizona." Arizona was cowboys and Indians. It was on his list of places he truly wanted to visit. He'd promised to take pictures and send some to Raiko -- who he liked, sort've, though he thought she'd be a lot prettier if she dressed like a girl.

"Sounds hot and boring. It's out in the middle of _nowhere_." She shook her head. "I miss France already. Father hated it."

"Parle-vouz françois?"

She glanced over at him and giggled. In French, she responded, "You speak French?"

"A little," he said, shaking his hand from side to side in the air. "Father Darius says my accent is hideous."

"It's not so bad."

"I want to travel the world." He propped his elbows on the railing. "I believe, if I know English, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic, and Spanish, that means I could talk to somebody almost anywhere that I go."

"You know all those languages?" She sounded impressed. She turned around to face him, leaning back against the railing.

"Not really." He switched back to English. "But I'm working on it. I speak English and Japanese and a little Spanish and French. And Latin, which is useless. And a little Arabic; there was a Moorish man who was a friend of Darius's who taught me some. I'll have to find someone else to teach me more ... I don't speak any Chinese, but there's lots of people from China in San Francisco. I hope I can find someone there who will teach me Mandarin. And I can learn more Spanish, of course, in California."

"I could teach you some Spanish," she leaned back against the railing too.

"You speak it?"

"We lived in Spain, before France. My father's a doctor and he likes to travel." She smiled shyly. "I guess I like to travel too. This farm he's buying, it's going to tie us down. And it's in the middle of nowhere! There won't be any people around. It'll just be me and my mother and father and the employees. Dad says we'll be able to drive into town to go to church on Sundays, but the town is pretty itty-bitty."

He tucked his hair behind his ear and regarded her thoughtfully. "I grew up at a country estate. We had lots of things to do."

"Really?"

"Sure. We rode horses, and we played games, and we hunted and fished. And we go into town all the time, or even into the city -- London -- every few months. Maybe it won't be so bad for you."

"Maybe." She brightened a bit. "My father said he'd buy me a horse. I like horses."

"So do I," Yukio said.

"I like to jump."

"So do I."

"It's not very lady like, but I like to go very fast."

"So do I." Yukio grinned at her. He thought she'd look really cute on a fine horse.

She blushed, suddenly, and looked quickly away. "I shouldn't be talking to you. My father told me to stay away from you."

"My father said something similar," Yukio frowned. Then, with a hint of bitterness, he said, "Your father's probably worried that I'm an uncouth yellow barbarian."

"How did you guess?" She giggled.

"I've heard it before," Yukio said, dryly. "If it helps, you might mention to him that my family's really really rich."

She giggled again. "It might, actually. How rich?"

"Really, really rich." Yukio shrugged. "And my brother's an English Lord."

"The rich part will likely impress him more than the nobility part," she allowed.

Yukio shrugged expansively. "The Trevors are wealthy, too. They own a whole bunch of factories, and a lot of land. Kenji -- that's my brother -- has worked really hard to make everything profitable."

"Yukio!" Kaoru's voice cracked like a whip across the deck, "Get over here _now_!"

"Uh-oh," he bowed briefly to her, because he knew it impressed the girls and made him look exotic and mysterious. With an exaggerated flourish, he indicated Kaoru. "My mother the Queen of the Demesne summons me. We'll have to talk later, milady."

She giggled, as he'd hoped.

Grinning, Yukio hurried off to Kaoru -- who reached up, and whacked him hard on the back of his head.

"Owe!" He rubbed his skull. "What's that for ...?"

"Don't play stupid, Himura Yukio. You _know _your father said to _leave that girl alone. _We don't need any more trouble!" She grabbed his elbow and shoved him towards their quarters. "You're confined to your room until tomorrow morning. And then you'll help the crew swab the deck, and after that, you'll do all our laundry, and after that, I'll find something else for you to do. I heard the messman's sick -- you may be working in the galley until he gets better."

"But Motherrrr ..."

"Don't _whine _at me." She smacked him again. "And don't be stupid."

"Mommmmm, we're going to be on this ship for weeks! There's nobody here to talk to!"

"Except us!" Kaoru smacked him again, as they walked through the doorway into the cabin he shared with his father. "And the crew. You can talk to the crew. And you can read. You brought enough books to start a library. You can write letters home. You haven't written _any _letters home. In fact -- after you get done helping the cook prepare dinner tomorrow, I expect you to write a letter to each of your siblings and to Jessica _and _Mrs. Marshall and Father Darius and Shinta and Byron before you go to bed."

"But I won't even be able to post them until we get to Hawai'i!"

"I'll can think of something else for you to do when you're done with that, since you can't think of respectable things to do with your time," Kaoru said, in a warning tone of voice.

"Father, she's being impossible!" Yukio appealed to Kenshin. His father was seated on the lower bunk, running a whetstone down the length of his sakabatou's long, curved blade.

Kenshin said mildly, "I believe it's time I teach you to mend clothing, that it is."

"Aaaaaugh!" Yukio launched himself into the upper bunk and buried his face in the pillow. "I hate you both!"

"You may hate me," Kenshin said, "but you are not to speak to that girl."

"But she's got to be bored ..."

"Yukio, this is not open for discussion." Kenshin's tone of voice had changed, from genial to hard as steel.

Yukio yanked the pillow over his head. "I hate you."

"Yukio!" Kaoru protested her son's words.

"That's a very strong word," Kenshin said. The steel was gone, replaced with wry humor. "I'm sorry you feel that way towards me. Because I love you dearly and I do not hate you at all."

"Auuugh!"

"Are you dying?" Kenshin said, in a curious tone of voice. "It sounds as if you're on your death bed, when you make that noise."

"Father? Just leave me alone."

"As you wish."

Yukio reflected that he'd _much _rather deal with Kaoru than Kenshin. Kaoru yelled. Kenshin's general _lack _of anger made it so much harder to stay angry at his father.

After a moment, Kenshin said, "Yukio, if not for yourself, please stay away from the girl for _her _sake."

"It's not fair."

"No. But you could ruin her reputation, and bring her family shame, simply by being her friend. I know you, and I trust that you will make honorable decisions, but others will assume the worst about us. I am sorry, Yukio. But that is a reality the three of us must live with."

--------------

It was very late -- or, perhaps, very early. The sun would rise soon, and the eastern sky was growing lighter. They had left Japan behind, and no land was visible in the predawn gloom.

Kenshin stood on the deck, arms folded, staring out to sea. Part of him wanted to smack Yukio. Part of him wanted to agree that it wasn't fair. And a very sizable portion of his soul wanted to scream in anger at the world. Yukio was very correct in that it _wasn't _fair. He was a good kid from a respectable family; it was unjust that so many people would think him a barbarian simply because of the color of his skin.

_Maybe I should send him home. We could turn around and drop him off. I am certain that he could stay with Yahiko -- Tsubame could likely use the help, anyway. Yahiko is sicker than he is allowing anyone to know._

But Yukio wanted to come with them. And frankly, Kenshin very much enjoyed having his youngest son around. Too soon, Yukio would be all grown up. He wanted to cherish the last few years of his son's childhood while he could.

"Kenshin-san," Shiro said, behind him. "We need to talk."

"If this about Yukio and the Timothys' daughter, I keep him very busy and he will have no time to cause trouble." Kenshin didn't turn around. Her buzz told him exactly where she was, however. "Yukio is young and foolish, but not me."

"The Steward's apprentice is dead."

"Nani?!" Kenshin forgot his English. He swallowed hard, and turned now. The boy in question was Yukio's age -- a skinny, freckle-faced teenager with buck teeth and an Irish accent. He knew how to play _Go _and had taught Kenshin and Yukio to tie sailor's knots. "What? How?"

"He -- he was feeling sick this morning. We found -- we found him in the head. Dead." Shiro's face was pale, and scared.

"In the ...?" He shook his head. "Shuri-dono, what happened?"

"It's cholera, Ken-san. Once you see it, you never forget it." She paused, then corrected his use of her name, "Shiro, please."

It wasn't a mistake that he'd used her real name. Nobody was close enough to hear, and Kenshin knew the comfort in being called by one's real name by someone who knew your story, and who was a friend. He was silent for a long, long moment. The Captain was right about _never _forgetting. Finally, he said, "Is anyone else sick?"

She nodded. He saw the grief in her eyes; she was trying to be tough, and in charge, but he knew she was hurting. She was a woman who cared deeply for her crew, and considered them friends.

Kenshin vented a hiss between his teeth. "One of my dearest friends is a physician. I have helped her with epidemics before. I know a bit, about how to treat the sick. Though it's been a long time since ... cholera. _Damn _it. Do you want my help?"

She said grimly, "Your help. Dr. Timothy's help. The help of the Gods. Any help would be appreciated. If you have medical experience ..."

"You say the prayers." Kenshin snorted. "I will help however I can. How many are sick?"

"The steward and his staff. Four people, so far. Including the messman, who's dead now."

"And they made our food last night ..." Kenshin felt his stomach roll. Firmly, he told himself he couldn't catch it. Everyone else on board, however, was at grave risk. And that, in truth, panicked him more than any thought that _he _would get sick.

He vaguely remembered the steward taking the four boys who worked under him on shore for a bit of fun on their last night in dock. He guessed they'd eaten something, or drank something, then. Cholera was _quick_. Bad seafood, contaminated fruit, dirty water -- all sources of death. You could be healthy one minute and squirting out your guts the next, and dead an hour later.

"Yes." She agreed.

Kenshin ran a hand over his face. "They probably got it on shore, but this one suggests not taking any chances. I will help however I can."

"Thank you. We won't be able to put into port for a month."

"Yeah, I know." Kenshin sighed. They couldn't turn back to shore; it would be illegal for them to disembark.

"I'm going to keep sailing for San Francisco." Captain Shiro turned away. Then she turned back, briefly. "And keep your cousin away from that girl. There's trouble, there."

"I know, I know."


	73. Chapter 73

Yukio was standing inside the doorway to their cabin when Kenshin entered.

"Dad, I don't feel very good ..."

Kenshin stared at him in utter horror. His son was deathly pale and he had his arms wrapped around his middle. Then, suddenly, Yukio started out the door at a near run. Kenshin guessed he had a trip to the head in mind. Not half an hour earlier, they'd been arguing about the pretty blond doctor's daughter and Yukio had been _fine_.

He made it several strides, then doubled over with a stomach cramp.

"Yukio ..." Kenshin whispered, horrified. It was beyond just embarrassment for his son. His mother had bent over the exact same way, one morning. She'd been dead by noon. Dead in his arms.

A flood of foul, stinking fluid trickled out of Yukio's pants legs. He stared at Kenshin in abject humiliation. "I just ... I just ... Dad ... I think I'm sick."

Kenshin said briskly, "You'll be fine."

"I ... oooh." He groaned.

Kenshin grabbed him by the arm and steered him back into the cabin. Yukio made it just inside, where another round of pain brought him to his knees. The smell that rolled off him was incredible; Kenshin gagged despite himself, and covered his mouth and nose with his hand. Yukio retched in response to Kenshin's reaction, and the stink he'd made.

"What's ... what's wrong with me?" He wiped his mouth and averted his eyes from the puddle on the ground.

"Cholera." Kenshin saw no point in lying to him.

"Oooh!" He groaned again. Loudly. Kenshin wasn't sure his son had heard his words. Yukio was doubled over again, obviously in agony.

The noise brought Kaoru, while Kenshin was still staring in utter shock. "What's going on? What's wrong with him?"

"The ship has cholera." Kenshin turned to her. "Go get water -- no, go get some soup from the galley." Megumi swore that salty broth was better than plain water for rehydration. "Get a bunch. A whole pot full."

"Ooooh ..."

"And rags and some soap and water, after. And get Dr. Timothy."

----------------

"The second mate's sick too," Kaoru reported, fifteen minutes later. Yukio was curled in a fetid ball on the floor of the cabin. Kenshin sat next to his son, stroking his son's pony tail. Yukio was making little sobbing noises as his insides cramped ferociously.

She handed Kenshin a pot of soup, and then, without comment, pulled Yukio's trousers off and started cleaning him up. He was covered in nasty, watery, foul fluid.

"Mommmm ..." Yukio protested, weakly. _Too _weakly. Already, his eyes were sunken deeply into his skull and his lips wrinkled and parched.

"Shush. I used to change your nappies, you little idiot." Then she gagged.

Kenshin propped Yukio's head up on his knee when Kaoru was done. Yukio turned his head away from the spoon of broth, however, and Kenshin said severely, "You _must _replenish the liquids you are losing or you _will _die."

"Oooh ..." he clutched at his stomach. "Oh, God, this is so humiliating."

"Shhh. It's okay." Kenshin stroked his son's bangs back from his forehead. His skin felt too dry already; he wasn't sweating, nor was he making tears. He'd lost so much liquid already. "Drink."

He spooned soup into his son, while Kaoru cleaned up the mess on the floor. She'd grabbed a bottle of carbolic acid, and wiped the strongly smelling liquid on the floor after washing everything down with soap and water. Kenshin suspected that sanitation was pointless, at this stage of things, but didn't say anything.

"Fuckkkk ..." Yukio swore, as more cramps seized him, and then he started crying. "Am I gonna die ...?"

"No," Kenshin said quiet, "You're not going to die. And later, I'm going to tease you about this."

"If I die, tell Abby I love her and I understand ..." He cried. "Everything that happened was my fault ..."

"Shhh. Worry about that later." Kenshin said, "Drink your soup."

Five minutes later, Dr. Timothy looked in. "Ooh," he groaned, in a tone rather akin to Yukio's. "Not another one."

"Can you help us, Doctor?" Kenshin said, hating the desperation in his voice. He knew Yukio could hear it; he knew _Kaoru _could, as well. It sounded as if he was begging. As fast as he spooned fluids into Yukio, they were coming right back out. Kaoru was mopping the floor again.

_They got sick after breakfast, and they were all dead by dinner_. Kenshin viscerally remembered how quickly his family had died. And how helpless he had felt, as a child. Now, almost seventy years later, he felt _just _as scared.

Timothy shrugged helplessly. "I lost my medical supplies when our ship foundered. Most of the crew's sick and they're already out of bismuth." Dr. Timothy looked at the pot of soup propped between Kenshin's feet. "Keep pouring that into him. Don't let him get any more dehydrated, and keep him warm and clean. If you two don't get it ..."

"I've had it," Kenshin lied, as an explanation towards why he wasn't going to get sick. "My parents die of it when I was small. I care for them alone. There was only one of me, and everyone was sick ... they all died. I didn't know what to do." He was babbling, and he realized it, and shut his mouth sharply. Kaoru looked up, face green and pasty, and stared at him. He _never _lost his cool.

Yukio, hearing that, groaned. "Am I gonna die?"

"No, Yukio. You're not gonna die."

Dr. Timothy stepped closer, and pressed his fingers to Yukio's wrist. "His pulse is very fast. You need to get more liquid into him or he _will_ die. That broth is an excellent choice."

"He's my youngest son." Kaoru sounded as desperate as Kenshin felt. "He's my _baby_."

--------------------

Hours passed. Kenshin forced Yukio to keep swallowing the broth, even when it came back up all over them. Yukio grew weaker, and lay with his eyes only half open in Kenshin's lap.

Then Kaoru groaned and doubled around her stomach.

------------

More time passed.

Now he was doctoring both of them, alternating between keeping them as clean as possible and forcing liquid on them.

"Don't want it ..." Kaoru tried to push his hand away.

He roughly grabbed her chin, pried her mouth open, and shoved a spoon full of watery soup into her mouth. "Swallow."

"Damnit, Kenshin ..." She spluttered.

"Swallow."

Forcing them to keep drinking liquids was something he _could _do. It was really the only treatment they had. Outside, the sun rose, and then it set. A full day later, they were still alive. He was neither winning nor losing this battle, but he was holding his ground. Then, while he was ladling liquid though Kaoru's cracked lips, Yukio made a cry behind him -- an odd, wordless, mewl. He turned to see his son with his back arched, feet drumming the ground, eyes rolled back in his head.

"No, Yukio!" Kenshin screamed. An echo of a cry from long ago raced through his memory. _No, Mama! _

His mother had died that way -- after massive convulsions. She'd seized for what felt like hours before she'd stopped breathing. It probably had not been that long, but he had not understood, then, what was happening.

"No! No!" Kenshin hovered over him, hands flailing in the air. He didn't know what to do. This wasn't an opponent he could fight. He was terrified. He was going to see his son _die_. "I'm sorry, Yukio. I'm sorry!"

"Mister, I might be able to help."

He turned. It was the blond girl, the doctor's daughter. What was her name? He couldn't remember. He nodded, unable to even find the words. Anything she could do, he was willing to allow. He was out of ideas, and almost out of hope. Finally, he whispered, "Please, anything." His voice was hoarse. Had he screamed, _No, Yukio! _that loudly?

She crouched next to Yukio's trembling form. She had a pot and a spoon in her hand. When there was a pause in the seizures, she scooped a spoonful of amber substance from the pot and thrust it into his mouth, then rubbed his throat. He was deeply unconscious, but he swallowed finally.

"What is that?" Kenshin asked.

"Honey."

"_Honey_?"

"It's simple, but it works. I don't know why -- my father doesn't know why -- but it stops the convulsions. Sometimes. Juice works, too, or anything sweet, but honey's easiest to get down their throats. It's sticky and they won't breath it in so easily." She turned to Kaoru. "She should have some too."

He propped her up. By this point, Kaoru was only semi-conscious. She groaned, though, and said, "Yukio ..."

"Hush. He'll be okay." Kenshin hoped he wasn't lying to her.

"This isn't your ..." Kaoru said blearily. The girl shoved a spoonful of honey into his mouth. Kenshin supplied the last word in his head, _fault. _

_It is, though. _By virtue of the life they lived with him, they were on this boat. Had he been a normal man his family would not be on a boat headed for a foreign country. They would not have been exposed.

"I'll work on your son. You keep getting fluids down her throat." The doctor's daughter turned back to Yukio and continued to force honey into his mouth.

"Timothy-dono, _thank _you."

"My name's Melody. And half the crew's dead." She wiped her arm across her face. "I've had it, so I'm immune. My stepmother's sick, though. I think she's going to die." Her words were matter-of-fact.

"Should you be ... should you be there? With her?"

"My father's with her. He said to come check on you two, when we heard you shout. Said he expected they'd both be dead, but to check on you. I don't think he wants me there when she ... he threw things at me, until I left the cabin. Maybe he wants to be alone with her, too, I guess." She flicked her ponytail over her shoulder and got another spoonful of honey down Yukio's throat. Her focus was on Yukio. "C'mon, you're too handsome to die on me here. Keep swallowing."

Yukio's throat worked.

"I'm never eating chicken soup again ..." That was Kaoru.

Kenshin snorted. "You survive this, you can eat whatever you want."

--------------

Hours more passed. Yukio lingered near death; Kenshin could sense his soul was barely clinging to his body. The girl alternated between feeding him the honey and the soup, and then when the honey ran out, she found jars of applesauce in the galley and gave him spoonfuls of that. Without complaint, she cleaned up his messes and comforted him when he cried out in pain.

Towards dawn again, both of them slipped into exhausted, but natural, sleep.

"They'll live." Melody stroked Yukio's forehead tenderly. Then she burst into tears. "I saved two, at least. I saved two ..."

Kenshin reached an arm out and rested a hand on her shoulder. "You save my ... you saved Kaoru, and Yukio. I owe you_everything_. If you need anything, I have a debt to you that I can not repay."

"I ..." She looked away. "I saw my father in the galley. My stepmother's dead."

Kenshin sighed. "My mother, my father, my brothers and sisters. They die this way." He swallowed down a hard lump. "I was eight years old. Kaoru, Yukio -- I thought I lose them, the same way. We _won_. This, I cannot ever repay you for."

She shrugged.

Kenshin rose. His knees popped as he did, and his back twinged. He'd been sitting crosslegged for hours, with Kaoru's head in his lap. He grabbed blankets off the bunks, covered both of them, propped their heads up on pillows, and then sat down on the lower bunk. "I'll stay up for awhile. You should go get some rest too."

"I'm going to go check on the rest of the crew. Most everybody's died who's going to, though, I think. The rest should live." She wiped her face with a clean corner of a blanket, then stepped out.

--------------------

Kaoru woke to pain -- her stomach muscles felt like they'd been ripped and torn. The last time she'd hurt like this, she'd been beaten up particularly badly after a fight.

_Yukio_.

She lifted her head. It didn't matter how badly she hurt; her _son _was her first priority.

She quickly established he was breathing, and was lying on the floor next to her, curled up in a very tiny ball under a blanket. The world spun as she crawled to him. He was deeply asleep, and clean. He didn't stir when she peered under the bedclothes at him. Only then, after looking around, did she find Kenshin as well.

He was on the bed, sound asleep, back to the wall. He looked awful -- even asleep, there were dark circles under his eyes. His hair was loose, hanging in tangled locks to the middle of his chest. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and his scars were silvery against very pale, hairless skin. A stained rag that had been his favorite blue top, with the pretty ruffles, lay on the floor near her.

He muttered restlessly, then cried out, "Mama ..."

She had not heard him cry for his mother in a very long time. He only did that in the worst nightmares, and usually only when something rocked his entire world. The last time he'd had one of those dreams had been the night after he had sent Chiyoko away.

She forced herself to crawl across the floor to him. She was so weak that it took as much willpower as any battle she'd ever fought in her life. Pulling herself up onto the mattress nearly made her black out again. But she made it, and she gently shook him awake.

He blinked at her, violet eyes rimmed with red. He almost never cried, but he stared at her now, and then tears started trickling down his cheeks. Without a word, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, and held her close. And his shoulders started shaking. Silently, he sobbed.

She'd exhausted what strength she had. Darkness claimed her. Her last conscious memory was Kenshin starting to rock back and forth, clutching her to his chest and crying those absolutely silent tears.

----------------

Author's note: Cholera is still a killer today in impoverished areas of the world. It's basically industrial grade food poisoning; most people who die from it succumb to either electrolyte imbalance or low blood sugar caused by massive fluid loss. Untreated, the death rate is over fifty percent -- and higher, by family, as there's a genetic component to susceptibility. And it is very, very quick, with death occurring within hours of onset of symptoms. (It was completely plausible that it would have wiped out Kenshin's entire family, particularly if they were already malnourished and poor, and left him an orphan overnight.)

The modern treatment is oral electrolytes, usually with antibiotics. IV fluids may be used in extremely severe cases, but it is entirely possible to treat it with oral rehydration. A couple cases of Pedialyte (or even Gatorade) would likely have saved Kenshin's parents. Historically, in Kenshin's time, I believe that the "Western" treatment would have been various sedatives (chloral hydrate among them) and bismuth (one of the ingredients in pepto bismol). Plus oral fluids, possibly not with an optimal balance of salts and sugars. The bismuth might have helped; I'm still trying to figure out the logic behind the chloral hydrate other than that they treated _everything _with it. Maybe someone with a medical background might be able to elaborate on that one.


	74. Chapter 74

The doctor sat on a chair on deck, a bottle of brandy beside him. Half the bottle was gone. Kenshin watched him for a moment, noting the exhausted lines of his shoulders, and the very slow way the man moved when he lifted a shotglass to his lips. He didn't think the doctor had slept much. Certainly, his daughter hadn't -- when not tending the survivors on the rest of the ship, she'd frequently come by to check on Yukio and Kaoru.

It had been four days since the cholera had struck. Kaoru was sleeping comfortably. Yukio was reading in a deck chair, on the other side of the ship, curled up in a blanket. Kenshin had noted Yukio's strategic proximity to the ship's head, but at least he was capable of getting himself there without assistance. He finally felt comfortable enough to leave them alone, sure that they'd _be_there when he returned.

"I am sorry about your wife."

Doctor Timothy grunted.

"May I join you?" Kenshin was honestly unsure of Timothy's reaction.

"Only got one glass." Timothy poured a shotglass full of amber liquid and thrust it at Kenshin.

Well, it seemed like he wasn't going to react with affronted bigotry to Kenshin's polite request. Kenshin accepted the offer of the alcohol; the only other Immortal on the ship was no threat to him and getting drunk sounded ... well, he hadn't actually wanted to get drunk since he was a teenager, but this seemed like as good an occasion as any to indulge a bit. It was decent brandy, too. Kenshin would have preferred beer or sake, but this wasn't entirely unpleasant.

After a moment, the doctor said, "My first wife -- Melody's mother -- divorced me." Timothy took a swig straight from the bottle. "Melody was perhaps a year old. My ex-wife died a few years later, and Melody's lived with me every since. I thought -- I thought with buying the farm in America, I'd finally settle down. Give her a home, and the mother she always deserved. Annabelle and Melody loved each other."

"I'm sorry."

"I married Annabelle -- four years ago. A good woman." Timothy upended the bottle and took a long pull from it. "Melody's not taking this well. Guess I'm not, either."

"I think I owe my son's life to your daughter." Kenshin nursed the shotglass of liquor.

"She seems quite taken with him."

Kenshin winced, fearing that recriminations would follow. "He a good boy, but sometimes, he talk too much."

"Meh. She needs someone to talk to, right now."

Kenshin let out a slow, even breath of relief. Apparently, there would be no accusations of misconduct by his son. "He'll mind his manners. Yukio's a good kid."

"My daughter says his brother's an English lord and his sister-in-law's very wealthy?" Dr. Timothy sounded skeptical. He ran a hand over grizzled hair and regarded Kenshin with a frown.

"You can confirm that with Captain Yamada, if you'd like." Kenshin nodded at the captain's cabin, towards the front of the ship. Shuri was probably asleep; she'd taken four watches in a row on the bridge. The ship's steward was currently spelling her -- almost the entire bridge crew was still too ill to work. The steward wasn't exactly in good shape, but he'd been one of the first to come down with it, and had recovered fairly quickly.

A light gleamed through the windows of her cabin, and Kenshin made a mental note to go check on her later. If she wasn't asleep, she might need a friend. She'd lost half her crew in the span of a couple of days.

"Mmm."

"His sister-in-law own this shipping line." Kenshin sipped the brandy. It left a warm, fiery trail down his throat. "I ... Yukio father and Kaoru adopt both Viscount Alastair Trevor -- we call him Kenji -- and Yukio, along with Yukio brothers, sisters. We're a close family -- all orphans, before we made our own family."

"Must be quite a tale."

"It is." Kenshin finished the brandy. The doctor refilled the shotglass without comment. "But also very ordinary. Everybody has a story, doctor. Mine just involves unexpectedly being family to English nobility." He scratched his nose and added, "I never expect that, in my life. Traveling the world now ... I'm a wanderer. I have much curiosity about the world. I like people. Like to meet people. Talk to people. Travel. Not surprised I leave Japan. I go back someday, it's home. But not surprised that I visit other countries."

He shrugged and leaned back, looking up at the sky. The sun was setting. He wrapped his arms around his knees. "Again, I am forever grateful that I do not lose Yukio and Kaoru. And I am sorry about your wife."

"Mmm." The doctor filled Kenshin's shotglass again. The bottle was nearly empty. "Mr. Shin, you're not going to have an easy time in San Francisco."

Kenshin glanced over at him. "If they do not try to kill me, I am content. There are worse things in the world than being mistrusted and disliked."

The doctor snorted a laugh. "This is true. I spent four years in Indian territory, in America, when I was much younger. It was an education on the evils of man, and I don't think_anyone _liked me."

"Yukio has much interest in Indians."

"Never really had much trouble with the Indians. Well, there was a spot of trouble with the Hopi -- but treat 'em with respect, and you generally get respect back. The Hopi hadn't been treated with respect when I ran into them and I got the tail end of it." He ran a hand over his face. "Lucky to get out of that one alive. Otherwise, not too much trouble, really. And I got to do a lot of good, with the settlers. And the Indians."

He'd called Japan a _barbaric land _and that comment still rankled with Kenshin. "Yet you don't seem to like Japan, much."

He snorted. "With all due apologies, your country is not very welcoming to outsiders."

"Perhaps not."

"I'm glad to be gone." He topped off Kenshin's shotglass, then finished the last swallows of brandy from the bottle. "Too much false politeness. I like people who say what they're thinking."

"Good manners is hardly akin to barbarism. You called it a barbaric land, when you speak to me, earlier." Kenshin glanced over at him. And smiled with rueful self-awareness. "I think I drink a bit, my false polite go away."

The man tipped his head to one side, clearly trying to remember what Kenshin was referring to. Kenshin prompted, "You call my home barbaric, when you ask if we have a berth on the ship."

Comprehension lit in his eyes. "I was tired. Frustrated." It was, Kenshin realized, an apology. "I shouldn't have said that."

"Mmm. We all say things we don't mean, sometimes. Japan is no more barbaric than anywhere else in the civilized world. Which is to say, all countries can be harsh and cruel at times." Kenshin rose. The bottle of brandy was empty. "I have good sake, in my quarters. I get it."

-----------------

"Can I help?" Kenshin asked, two days later, of Shuri.

She was practically living on the bridge. More than half her crew had died, leaving few people to run the ship. The survivors were mostly back on their feet -- or, at least, able to force themselves to work. The head was still a popular place.

"Not on the bridge," she said, bluntly. "You don't know anything useful about navigation or running a ship. I don't have time to teach you. However, my second mate's making dinner. You go make dinner, and send him up here to spell me. That would be a tremendous help."

Kenshin nodded. "I'll get Yukio and Kaoru to help."

"... put Kaoru in charge of cleaning, please."

Kenshin snorted. Shuri had, apparently, heard of Kaoru's near-legendary inability to cook. "I'll do that."

----------------

Kaoru was quiet, as she scrubbed pots and pans in the galley sink.. She moved slowly -- Kenshin knew she was still hurting, her stomach muscles raw and sore, her body weak. Still, the work needed to be done, and she was capable of doing it. She might be miserable, but she was no longer in any sort of danger.

"Take your time," he told her, as he chopped scallions for a healthy fish soup. "There is no hurry to get those dishes done."

"Kenshin," she spoke in Japanese, "I nearly died."

"Aa. But you'll be okay, now."

"Someday, I won't be."

"There's no need to think of that, now, that there isn't."

"Kenshin," she said, very seriously. She shut off the water, and turned to face him, and repeated herself, "Kenshin. Look at me."

He stopped chopping.

"I'm sixty years old. I might live to be a hundred, or I might die tomorrow."

"The future's never promised to any of us, Kaoru." He resumed dicing the vegetables. He didn't want to discuss this.

She reached out and whacked him across the top of the head. "Look at me, baka."

He looked, meeting her level gaze. Her eyes were very blue, and very large.

She folded her arms. "I worry about you."

"There is no need to worry about this one ..." He tried to turn back to his work on the soup ingredients.

"Shut up." She reached out and took the knife from his hand. Firmly, she set it down on the counter. The click of steel against wood was loud in the silence of the galley. "Look at me."

He met her eyes. They were so blue; pale and beautiful. Clear. She'd always been good at seeing the truth in a person's heart; now, her gaze seemed to bore right into his soul.

She blinked a couple of times, and was the first to look away. "Kenshin, someday, I'm going to be gone from your life. You need to be ready for that."

He didn't want to have this conversation. He _knew_what was coming, someday. She didn't need to rub salt in this raw wound. "Maa, maa ..." Again, he tried to return to his work.

She caught his chin with her fingers and turned him back to face her. "Kenshin. I am very serious. There will come a day when I will die."

"I am aware of that." His words were a trifle cold; she wasn't letting him retreat and he felt defensive, somehow. "Forgive this one, if he prefers not to think of such things."

"I do not think you need to apologize to me." She let him go. "But I worry about how you'll go on. Kenshin -- love is one of your greatest strengths, but it's also your weakness. You _need _people to protect. It's what makes you feel whole, and human. If you do not have someone in your life to protect, and love, and -- and to be the man for -- you will be miserably unhappy. I know you."

"There will never be anyone but you," he said, softly. "You needn't worry about that, Kaoru. I ... I ..."

"Kenshin, that is _precisely _what I worry about."

"I'd never be disloyal to your memory!" The words were ripped from his chest. He spun about, showing her his back. He didn't want her to see the real anger in his eyes. "How can you even think that! You know how I feel about you!"

A hand touched his shoulder. "You moved on from Tomoe."

"That was different, Kaoru." He'd had a few short months with Tomoe, and he had been a very different man. She had changed his life, but her role had not been the part of _lifemate._He'd had over forty years with Kaoru, and couldn't imagine a life without her.

She stroked his pony tail, and then rested her forehead between his shoulder blades. Her arms wrapped around his chest, and she said, very low, "I don't want you to be alone, Kenshin, when I'm gone. I can't bear the thought of you _alone_. When I am gone, Kenshin, mourn me -- but _find someone_."

He was silent. This wasn't what he had expected to hear. "I thought you were going to ask me to never forget you. I thought you were going to ask that I never love anyone else like I love you."

"Do I need to ask that of you?" She tightened her hug. "Have you ever forgotten Tomoe?"

"No." He pulled free, but only so he could turn to face her. "Kaoru ..."

She reached up and stroked his scars. "Do promise me one thing, however."

"What?" He was humbled, by this conversation. "Anything, Kaoru."

"Don't ever make a habit of growing a beard." She stood on her tip-toes and kissed his nose. "You look better with a clean face."

He laughed, more from the relief of the change of subject than from any humor in his heart.

She swatted him playfully on the side of the head; when he ducked away, she smacked him on the butt. With a low laugh, and a shake of his head, he went back to chopping the scallions. And he hoped that the onion fumes were a plausible explanation for the tears that again prickled at his eyes.

She went back to her dishes. He noted she pulled a chair up and sat down to wash, and she looked too pale -- but he also knew that if he tried to take over from her, she'd expend more energy arguing with him than she would just doing the dishes.

After washing a couple of large pots and a stack of plates, she said, "Kenshin, I'd suggest you find another Immortal, after I'm gone. You are hurting, because I age. Find someone who won't." She nodded towards the front of the boat, in Shuri's direction. "Our good Captain has a crush on you."

Kenshin barked a surprised laugh, shocked that she'd make a suggestion like that. He said the first thing that came to mind, which was, "Shiro is _really _not my type."

"Oh, come now."

"She's ... she's too independent!"

"Ho! And I'm not?" A spoon hit him in the head. "Don't tell me you like helpless, vulnerable little ladies. I know for a fact that's not true."

"Ichi!" He rubbed his skull. He wasn't entirely sure what he'd said that deserved that. In a softer tone, he said, "Kaoru, please. I don't want to talk about this right now."

Surprisingly, she didn't argue. She just went back to the dishes.

--------------------


	75. Chapter 75

Yukio cracked eggs into a bowl, then started whisking them briskly with a fork. He'd never had to cook before in his life -- though peeling vegetables had been one of his father's favorite punishments for misdeeds, right up there with scrubbing floors, pulling weeds, and mucking out stables. Still, despite his lac of experience, cooking was proving easy enough.

The galley had a gas-fired griddle; he poured the bowl full of eggs out and started scrambling them.

"Need some help?"

It was the girl, Melody. He looked up and said, with a rueful smile, "Yes, but Kenshin and my mother says I'm not to talk to you."

"_My _father said to come down and give you a hand, so stop worrying." She grabbed an apron off a hook by the door and shrugged into it. "Eggs for breakfast?"

"Eggs, sausage, and there's American biscuits in the oven."

"American ...?" She queried.

"American biscuits." He nodded at a cookbook, open on the galley's counter. "Americans call British biscuits _cookies_. The first recipe I tried out of that book for biscuits came out kinda weird. Your father explained the difference."

She laughed. He stopped cooking for a second to watch her; her teeth were even, very white, perfect, and her lips full and lush. With amusement, she observed, "So _that's _why we had biscuits with raisins in them for dinner two nights ago."

He chuckled. He couldn't help it; her amusement at his bumbling effort to make baked goods was infectious. "The recipe didn't seem right. I was expecting what Americans call cookies. But the first batch wasn't cookies. So, I tried to make scones. It came out kinda ... well."

She shook her head. "They were edible."

"You're too kind." He scooped the eggs off the griddle and into a bowl.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like I've been run over by a wagon." He sighed. "Shinta says I owe you my life."

"Shinta?"

_Damn_. A lifetime of calling his father _Shinta_, and he'd slipped up. "Ken, I mean. My cousin."

"Mr. Shin?" Her eyes lit with recognition. "What does the -ta mean?"

"Never-nevermind." He shook his head. "Anyway. If you're going to help, you might get the biscuits out of the oven and tell me if I got them right, this time."

With a grin, she grabbed oven mitts off the rack behind the stove and pulled the tray out. "Not many men cook, unless they're a steward on a ship, or a chef."

"My father does." That was safe territory, as long as he didn't tell her that Ken Shin was his father. "And if you've ever seen my _mother _try to cook, you know why my father does."

"So you come by it honestly, eh?"

"Actually, I've never had to cook before." He sampled a chunk of egg with a fork. They tasted okay. "But there's a cookbook, and I'm good at following directions. Scone-biscuit-things aside. I _didn't _follow directions there, and that's where I went wrong."

"Ah." She found the pot that had the sausage, safely packed in lard, on the counter where he'd left it. She scraped off the top layer of fat and started forking out sausage patties. "I grew up cooking."

"Then I shall have many questions for you, so long as my family doesn't get mean again and forbid me from speaking to you."

"Why don't they want you talking to me?" She plopped the sausage patties on the griddle. They sizzled aromatically.

"There was a girl." He wiped his hand across his face. It was hot in the galley, and he was sweating. He wanted to sit down, but also didn't want to look sick in front of this girl. She'd likely nag him and make him take it easy. "It went badly. Ken's afraid of a repeat. So's my mom."

She glanced curiously over at him. "Abby?"

"How'd you know?"

"You were talking about her. When you were sick. You must have loved her a lot."

"Her father ... well, her father didn't like me much." He made a loose, flopping gesture with one hand at his face. "'Cause I'm Japanese. He assumed -- well, I'm sure you've seen the cartoons n' stuff. Some people think we're, umm, aggressive. He was one of them. He assumed I'd been ... well. He took it wrong." He was blushing. It wasn't exactly a polite subject for conversation with a nice young lady. "Anyway, he shot my cousin."

"Ken?"

_Yes_. "No. Shinta. He died."

"Oh. That's awful."

"I saw it." He didn't have to feign how horrible that had been, watching his father die in his arms. Even knowing he'd come back, it had been an experience he hoped never to repeat. "So that's why Ken and my mom get on my case when I talk to you."

"Well, you can tell them my father's _not _going to shoot anyone." She dimpled, prettily. "Actually, I think he likes Mr. Shin. It's the money, I assure you, but he's been suggesting I 'get to know him' .."

Yukio laughed. It was far from the first time a young woman had expressed an interest in his father, unknowing of the truth that the young redhead was a seventy year old man. "Don't bother, not if you're thinking of trying to catch his eye. He's got a sweetheart, and eyes only for her. But wouldn't your father object to -- well, we're not white."

"Money." She gave him a wide-eyed, innocent look. "Money is a great equalizer. I hadn't noticed how exotically handsome you both are, not at _all_. It's entirely about the money and not at all about big brown eyes -- or pretty purple, in Mr. Shin's case -- and long dark hair."

Yukio snorted, amused. "You sound like half the society girls who threw themselves at me, back in London. I think they'd date a troll if it was rich enough."

She threw her head back and laughed. "Surely, they weren't so blunt!"

"Well, no. At least you're honest. And if you're on the subject of honesty, Ken's hair is red." Now he _was _flirting. "It's just dyed black so he wouldn't stand out in Japan. If you like dark and exotically handsome, you'll have to stick with me."

She flipped the sausages on the griddle, and said over her shoulder, "I just might, Mr. Himura."

He sobered, with the feeling that he'd somehow stepped over an unspoken line. "We really shouldn't do this, you know. I don't want you getting in trouble."

She sighed heavily. "But you're so much _fun_. I like that you _talk _to me. Most guys are scared of smart girls."

_If I was scared of smart girls, I'd have died of fright while still in nappies, between Mama and Jessica and my sisters. _His father probably wouldn't approve, but he offered, "Hey, after we feed everybody, I've got a chess set. Do you know how to play?"

"I do." The dimpled grin changed to a calculating look. "If you promise not to get mad if I beat you."

"Oh, that's _if _you beat me." He was proud of his skills at chess. Darius had taught him. "Not many can."

"Oh, ho, modesty is one of your best traits, I see."

"Honesty, not modesty. That's my motto."

-----------

He found her a few hours later, after cleaning up after lunch. She seated on a chair on the deck, wind from their travel whipping her hair about. The laughter in her eyes had vanished -- she was leaning over, elbows propped on her knees, and a tiny object held in her hands.

"Hey."

She looked up. He saw she'd been crying.

He sat down next to her. He guessed he knew why she was crying. Softly, sympathetically, he said, "I'm adopted, you know. My parents died when I was really little. I don't remember them, and I guess it's not the same, but I miss them sometimes. Even though I don't really remember them."

She showed him the object in her hand -- a porcelain cameo. "It was my step-mothers. I bought it for her, for Christmas last year. My dad said I should have it. I ... she wasn't my mom, but I loved her. She was a good friend. Like a much older sister, I guess."

She wiped at her eyes with the heel of one hand. "I'm going to be all alone, now. My dad says we're still going to move to the farm. There's _nobody_ there. I thought I'd at least have Annabelle."

He couldn't even imagine being entirely alone, as she was describing. "I miss my brothers and sisters. I have five siblings. They're all married, starting families of their own. Well, Kenji's been married for years, and has five kids of his own, and another on the way. I'm the youngest of us, though." He sighed. "I could have stayed with Kenji -- I thought about it -- but ..." He glanced out at the ocean. "... but I wanted to see the world. And I wanted to stay with my mom and Ken."

"Where's your dad, anyway? The one who adopted you?"

"In Japan." It was a lie, but one that came easy to his lips from long practice. "He's got some powerful enemies in the government. They won't let him have a passport. The same enemies are why we can't live there anymore."

"Enemies?"

"He was a war hero, but now that the war's over, some of the people he fought against are well-placed to make life difficult for him. He was an assassin -- a hitokiri -- during the Meiji revolution."

She was giving him a blank look. He wondered if she knew anything of Japanese history at all. Probably not; most Westerners didn't know much. He added, "He doesn't talk about it much, really. I don't think he's very proud of it."

"I'd imagine not."

"Hey. You don't know my father!" He said, immediately defensive. "He's one of the wisest, kindest, men alive. I'm sure he was only doing what he had to."

"At least you don't think killing people is glorious."

"No, and my father vowed never to kill again, after the revolution. He hasn't, even when the government asked him to pick up a sword, before I was born, to hunt another hitokiri gone mad and evil. And then there was the nut case who kidnapped my _mom _..." He stopped, wondering how much he should talk about. Then he shook his head. "My mom tells the stories much better than I do. We'll have to ask her to tell some tales, one of these nights."

"Do you miss him?" She asked, quietly. "Your dad."

"I've got my mom and my cousin. They keep me pretty busy." That was an easy evasion, and one he'd practiced before.

"I miss Annabelle so much." She stared at the cameo in her hands. "I'm scared, now. What if something happens to my dad? He's sixty-five. I'll be all alone in the world."

"He seems healthy enough."

"So was Annabelle."

"Guess I'm lucky." Yukio wrapped his arms around his legs. He'd never thought about this before, but there was comfort in knowing that no matter what happened, he'd always have people who were kin, that he could rely upon. "I've got a lot of family, and I'm pretty close to all of them."

"I've got an aunt, on my mother's side, but she didn't want me when I was five and my mom died. My dad tried to leave me with her, and she said I'd be too much trouble. I _heard _her say that. She said it right in front of me. Can't imagine she'd want me now. So I'd be all alone, if anything happened to him." She wiped at her eyes. "Sorry, Yukio, I'm just feeling a bit down. And I'm missing her -- missing Anabelle -- so much."

He reached up and rested a hand on her arm. "It's allowed."

"Yeah, I guess. Hey, weren't we going to play chess?"

"I've got the set in my quarters. I'll go get it. Want to meet in the mess?"

"Yeah." She stood up and wiped at her eyes again. "Umm, thanks."

"For what? I'm glad for the company!"

---------------

Kenshin was in their cabin when Yukio arrived. He glanced at his father, then started digging in his trunk for the chess set Darius had given him for Christmas, the year before.

"What are you up to?"

"Gonna play chess."

"With Melody." Kenshin's words were flat. "Do you truly think that's a good idea?"

"Umm, yeah. Her father doesn't seem to mind."

"Her father's seeing _money_." Kenshin huffed an exasperated sigh. "And is not necessarily acting in her best interest, or yours."

"Look, Dad, she's all alone." Yukio was fully willing to argue this point. "She has _nobody _to talk to. She needs a friend right now."

His father's light-colored eyes were grave and unsmiling beneath the dark fall of his bangs. "Yukio, I want your word that this will _not _go being friendship between the two of you, and that once we arrive in America, that it _ends_. For both your sakes."

"Father ..."

"What will you do with her, otherwise? Marry her?" Kenshin's words were cold. Yukio gave his dad a startled look; Kenshin seldom took this tone with him. "In Britain, you were the brother of a Viscount. Your family was extremely wealthy. You were sheltered from the worst that the world could throw at you, and this was by our deliberate choice. There, you very well could have married a white woman. People would have disapproved, but your status in life was such that it could have happened. Particularly with a girl such as Abby, who was of much lower social standing than you."

"I ..."

"Don't tell me you understand, because you _don't_." Kenshin's voice rose and cracked like a whip. "You will not have the protection of Kenji's title, or Jessica's money, nor the safety of a country estate. You do not have a future with Melody Timothy. Do _not _make the mistake of dreaming that you might."

"It's not fair. I like her. If I was white, nobody would care. If I was white, they'd say she was a lucky girl to have me." He felt rage bubble up. "It's not fair, Father!"

"Nobody ever said it was." Kenshin turned around, to face his bunk. "Be her friend. But nothing more. And remember that it ends in a few weeks. I trust you, Yukio. But I also worry."

He glanced over his shoulder, face softening. "I fully agree that it is not fair, and that she is a lovely girl. Because I _like _her, I am protecting both of you. Yukio -- please, if you've ever trusted me on anything, trust me on this issue. You must not even entertain thoughts of a life with Miss Timothy."

"We're just friends!" Yukio said. And then bit his lip, because it hurt to say that. And he didn't want to make the promise his father was demanding.

"Keep it that way, that you should." Kenshin, to his relief, didn't push the point by demanding an oath. Yukio wasn't fooled into thinking Kenshin had overlooked that promise -- or lack thereof -- but rather, it went against his very nature to demand such a thing from Yukio when his son truly didn't want to give it. "Remember, too, it is not just you and Melody who would be put at risk by a foolish love."

Yukio winced. He remembered his father's blood spilling over his hands, and that desperate terror as his life slipped away.

Kenshin's eyes were very grave. Somberly, he said, "I see you understand. I do not wish to worry your mother, or worse, need to uproot her once more."

--------------


	76. Chapter 76

"That's Sirius, the dog star," Melody lay on the deck on a blanket, her fingers laced behind her head. "See?"

He saw, after a brief glance, following the line of her finger towards the night sky. She was shivering; he could see it in the way her hand trembled.

It was chilly, off the coast of California. He'd thought California meant orange groves and ranches, cowboys and Indians, and warmth. Here, moored within sight of their destination, the air was damp and cold.

"Do you want my blanket?" He offered, then tugged the one he was sitting on out from underneath him.

She sat up and regarded him seriously. "Yukio, we're docking tomorrow. Will you write me?"

"My mother and cousin have forbidden it." He held the blanket out to her.

"They're terribly mean. It's just letters. You're so much fun to talk to."

"I know." _Fun to talk to _was an understatement. She made him laugh. They'd cried together as well, and discussed everything from politics to chess to language. They'd had deep conversations, and silly ones. In a few short weeks she'd picked up enough Japanese to carry on a polite conversation with his parents -- enough that he'd had to start censoring himself and calling Kenshin _cousin _instead of _father _when she might be listening. He thought she was probably a genius, and he was going to desperately miss her intellect.

And her beauty, too.

She was looking at him with wide blue eyes, and in the moonlight, her blond hair was silvery. Impulsively, he reached a hand out and cradled her jaw in his fingers. "We're never going to see each other again, after tomorrow. I'm sorry."

"I'm going to miss you so much." She crawled forward, suddenly, and in one smooth move, wrapped the blanket around both of them and crawled into his arms.

He rested his chin on the top of her head. She was warm, and soft in all the right places. Her breathing was steady, and her hair against his face very soft. He wished he could hold her forever -- or have a lifetime of holding her every night. He wished they could cuddle tomorrow, and the next day, and for the rest of their lives. Finally, he said, "I don't care what they want. I'll write you letters, Melody. I will."

It was a bitter solace to think of only talking to her by letter.

"My father _wants _me to write you." She giggled. "It's the money, I swear. As soon as he found out just how rich your family is, he was all for you to court me."

"My parents are concerned it could lead to trouble for us." He hugged her close.

She tilted her head back and kissed him, a brief brush of her lips across his -- then firmer, insistent. He returned it, suddenly desperate to make this moment last. But he was the first one to withdraw and with regret he said, "Melody, I cannot do this. It will hurt too much, to say goodbye to you tomorrow. I need to stop now."

"I could come and visit. I'm sure my father would pay for the train fare."

"No." He let go of her, and turned away. "_No_."

And to his shamed shock, he burst into angry tears. Unmanly, undignified, helpless. He scrambled to his feet and said in a voice that was choked and angry, "No! I can't do this! I can't -- I can't dream, I can't _wish _for more, and then say goodbye! It's not fair! It's just not fair, Melody!"

"Yukio ..."

He ran for his cabin, leaving her behind. He was very grateful that Kenshin wasn't in his bunk; Yukio scrambled up to the top bunk, yanked the covers over his head, and didn't sleep at all until morning.

-----------------

"Mr. Shin," the man said, and bobbed an approximation of a Japanese bow at him. "Welcome to San Francisco. I am so sorry to hear of the difficulties of your trip. I am Jerry Morton, manager of Marshall Shipping here in San Francisco."

The big boss, Kenshin realized. The man was dapper, well dressed, and had met them at the dock. Captain Shuri had radioed ahead to tell them that they were finally being allowed to dock.

Kenshin bowed back. "A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Morton. This is my cousin Yukio Kamiya, and my aunt Kaoru Kamiya."

"Welcome, again, to San Francisco. I have a carriage waiting to take us up to the office, and I took the liberty of renting you hotel rooms in one of the finest hotels in town."

"That was very kind of you." Kenshin smiled.

"Mrs. Marshall sent a cable telling us that you are to work directly under me as a translator, yes?" The man said, conversationally, after they climbed into the carriage. The driver clicked to the horses and it rattled off over a cobblestone street.

Kenshin had been looking out the window; the city was cloaked in fog, but what he could see of it showed a mix of new construction, mostly ornate wooden buildings. They'd had a bad earthquake only eight years before, and many of the buildings in this part of town had been rebuilt after it. Now he glanced back and nodded, "Yes. I am fluent in Japanese. My English is poor, but I can be of help."

"Your English is better than half the beggars we've hired."

"My cousin is fluent in both, and very talented." Kenshin proudly reached out and ruffed Yukio's hair, which earned him an amusingly incensed look. "He also speaks a little Spanish and French, and Latin, and a little Arabic."

"Useful." The man grunted. "Mrs. Marshall said she wants us to train him for management."

"Jessica," Kenshin said precisely, "want Yukio to have your job when you retire. That what she said to me. And he will be good at it. She said you are to train him with that in mind."

The man was silent. Finally, he said, "She's the boss."

Kenshin smiled. "Yes, she is."

"I'm not retiring for several years."

"Then Yukio will have much time to learn the job."

------------------

House hunting, Kenshin decided, wasn't nearly as fun as he'd expected. It was the _deciding_ aspect. The permanency of the decision. The home they picked they'd have to live in -- and live with -- for a very long time. Some homes he looked at had structural problems. Some had unsavory neighbors. A few were too far from public transportation -- the network of street cars that covered the town. One he ruled out because he didn't like the neighbor's incessantly barking dog.

"What do you think?" Kenshin asked Kaoru, of one of the better options.

The home was large; a three-story Victorian that was nearly new -- it had been completed two years before. The owner had decided he didn't like the climate, and put it up for sale.

She stared up at the gingerbread on the eaves. "It's cute."

"There's room for a little garden in back, and there's a stable for a couple horses." He'd looked at it earlier, by himself, from a list of houses for sale that the agent had given him. He liked this house more than the others; it was large, spacious, and less expensive because of the distance from public transportation. There was, however, a secondary school within walking distance for Yukio and it was only four miles -- most of the way by streetcar -- to Marshall Shipping's office.

"Horses." Kaoru didn't like horses -- never had. Kenshin suspected it was a mix of genuine fear of getting hurt, and the fact that horses didn't take kindly to her general hot temper and lack of patience. She found riding them frustrating and the horses sensed this. Still, she allowed, "I suppose that makes sense. We can afford it, and my calves hurt from climbing that hill!"

They'd taken a street car from the hotel downtown, but the last quarter mile had been an uphill slog on a cobblestone road, on foot. Kaoru, still not completely recovered from her illness, had needed to stop and rest twice.

"Come inside." The agent selling the house led the way through the door. "So, what do you think of San Francisco so far, Mr. Shin?"

"It's very colorful," Kenshin said.

"I'm surprised that you're not looking for a home in Chinatown." The man was simply being conversational. "You'd blend in better. This is a beautiful house, but there might be trouble with the neighbors."

"We're not Chinese," Kenshin said. "There might be trouble anywhere."

"But you're Mongolian ..."

He hated that word. For some reason, Westerners seemed to want to lump everyone -- Chinese, Japanese, Koreans -- all in one big group. And they called them _Mongolians _or _Orientals _or _yellow_. And worse words; those were the ones used in polite company. "We're Japanese," Kenshin said, firmly. "And we deal with any trouble with neighbor that happen. We just try to fit in, and we not fit in any better in Chinatown than we would here."

"If you say so." The agent still sounded dubious. "Let me show you the bedrooms."

"I show my wife the parlor."

Kaoru started laughing when she saw the room. It was enormous -- half the span of the ground floor, and more than big enough for a dojo. In Japanese, eyes merry, she asked, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I think you need work to be happy." He grinned at her. He had thought she would approve. "Do you like it?"

She studied the wood floor, and the large windows that let in light. The parlor had a door to the outside, and a porch that had the same general feel as an engawa. Still, she said critically, "It needs a bath house ..." The Marshall's estate lack of bathing facilities when they had first moved in had left a large impression on her.

"It's got indoor plumbing. It's also wired for electricity." _Now _Kenshin led the way up the stairs to the second floor. "Here, look."

The bathroom was small, but it had a bathtub, toilet, and sink.

Kaoru frowned.

"We'll have a bathhouse built, but this will work for now," Kenshin promised. He liked the indoor toilet, but he wanted a Japanese style bath house too. "Half these houses still don't have indoor plumbing, Kaoru. This is the best we can do right now. But we can have a bathroom inside. It'll be nice on cold mornings."

"It's always cold here. It's June. Why is it so cold?" She sounded whiny, and then sniffled. Half the city had a cold; he suspected she was coming down with something.

"I think it's better than choking muggy heat." Yukio stuck his head into the bathroom. "The bedrooms have fireplaces in them!"

They went off to look at the bedrooms, which Kaoru was much happier with than the bathroom. There were four bedrooms on the second floor; Kenshin figured they could turn one into a library for their book-worm son, and one into an office.

The house also had servant's quarters off the kitchen. He didn't intend to have servants live there, because he had very good reason to be fond of privacy, but he though he thought they might hire a cook.

The attic level had another large bedroom, and an unfinished section that might be good for storage, if they had anything to store. He thought that if they were using the downstairs parlor as a dojo, they could use the third floor bedroom as a sitting room. It was large, with airy windows and good light.

Two weeks later, they owned the house.

--------------

It was summer, and school would not start until September.

Yukio glanced at the window. It was four PM, and his father expected him to be at the office and working until five. Working, in this case, meant accounting. Mr. Morton had a sadistic streak, Yukio had concluded, and seemed to know that he loathed math.

He was good at it, but it was _boring_. He added up a neat column of numbers, checked his math twice, then filled in a blank in the book. Gross profit from the last ship to arrive established, he blew the ink dry and then closed the book.

"Yukio," Kenshin walked in, frowning at an invoice. "What's this word mean?"

Yukio glanced at the paper, which Kenshin was supposed to be translating into Japanese. It would accompany a shipment back to Japan. It looked like most of the cargo consisted of spools of copper wire, but here were a few luxury items as well. "Ambergris."

"In Japanese?" Kenshin requested.

"It's whale vomit." Yukio, glad for a diversion, said with wide, innocent eyes.

"Whale ... vomit." Kenshin scratched his head with the butt end of his pen. He had ink on his face, ink on his hands, and if he wasn't careful, was going to end up with ink in his hair, as well. Obviously, he also didn't have a clue what the Japanese translation would be for _ambergris_. Or why anyone would want to send whale vomit to Japan.

Yukio took pity on his father and supplied the Japanese word. Two days ago he'd had to ask Captain Yamada for help with the same word, and he remembered it. Kenshin snorted, recognizing the substance now -- it was used in perfumes -- and wrote the appropriate characters down. "Whale vomit," he muttered under his breath.

-----------------------

"Your cousin is a good kid." Morton said, stepping into Kenshin's office at the back of Marshall Shipping's building.

Kenshin looked up from translating a letter from a supplier in Japan. He was getting pen-calluses to go with his sword-calluses, and developing a strong dislike for written form of the English language. No matter how hard he tried he just couldn't quite wrap his brain around all the fine points of written English. Speaking it was hard enough. Still, his translations were at least understandable, if imperfect. And people who _could _do translations were very hard to find. "Yukio? Yes. He is."

"I was skeptical. He's so young ..." Morton shrugged.

_And Japanese_, Kenshin thought, but didn't say. In the weeks they'd been in San Francisco, every concern he'd had about prejudice had been driven home as accurate. It was far worse than England. While they hadn't personally been touched much -- yet -- by it, the newspapers and periodicals were rife with ill sentiments, and with reports of violence towards various minorities. He tried very hard to keep a low profile, and to be charming and friendly when he couldn't, and so far, the worst they'd experienced themselves had been minor comments and mild suspicion when shopping.

"... he works so hard. And he's a bright boy!" Morton sounded enthusiastic. "I wish my son worked like he does. I don't think he's ever been late, not once, and he's so studious. It's hard to believe he's only fifteen. I only have to show him something once, and he has it understood. And he's so polite."

Kenshin waited, wondering what the point was to Morton's gushing. Finally, the man said, "There's a man I know, with a daughter ..."

"Ah." Kenshin set his pen down with a click. So Morton was matchmaking. He wondered if there was some motive behind this other than liking Yukio.

"She's the granddaughter of a Japanese official, who is, I believe, of a very good family. Samurai, I've heard. He works for the Japanese government. I mentioned Yukio to her father, and he'd like to invite your family over for dinner."

Kenshin sighed.

"They'll be attending the same school."

Kenshin looked up. It sounded as if there was no polite way to get out of this. He honestly didn't want to deal with Yukio and _girls_, at the moment, but Yukio would be going to school in a month. At least, this way, he'd get to meet at least one of the eligible young ladies -- and one who sounded like she just might be truly _eligible_. "A dinner, you said?"

-----------------

"Faaaatherrrr," Yukio drawled the word out in English that Saturday evening, "I'm fine!"

"You've got hairs sticking up." Kenshin reached up to smooth them down, and Yukio ducked away from Kenshin's spit-dampened fingers.

Kenshin shook his head, and let his son lead the way up to the brightly lit house on the hill. If Yukio wanted to meet this girl with a cowlick sticking up at the back of his head, that was, he concluded, Yukio's decision. Yukio had recently cut his long hair short. He had said something about his ponytail making him look old-fashioned.

Kenshin had no problem with looking old-fashioned. He figured he was practically an antique anyway.

Kaoru, hands tucked in the sleeves of her kimono, followed Yukio. She'd gone all out to impress this _Ambassador's son_ -- her hair was carefully coiffed, her kimono immaculate, her makeup perfect. She looked the very image of a respectable Japanese matron -- except that there was a familiar, mischievous gleam in her blue eyes. Kenshin figured she was excited by the chance to play _fine Japanese lady _to another Japanese family, when normally, social functions in their circles required Western clothes.

Kenshin, however, knew damn well the reason she was keeping her hands out of sight was that she had blisters on her palms. She'd fallen out of practice with her bokken over the last several weeks, and then had bloodied her hands training. She was bound and determine to be in fighting shape for her first students and had been pushing herself very hard.

They reached the front door of the fine Victorian mansion. Yukio knocked, while Kenshin leaned over and whispered to Kaoru, "You look very desirable tonight."

She was still giggling in reactions to his words when door opened. The woman answering it was diminutive, elegant, and dressed very Western, in a long skirt and fitted bodice. Perhaps forty, she had dark hair swept back into a carefully restrained braid and looked years younger than her age. Kaoru's face fell; Kenshin winced for her. He, too, had assumed _Japanese _meant a taste of home.

"Good evening," she said, in perfect English, extending a gloved hand to Kenshin. "You would be Mr. Shin?"

Kenshin, who had started to bow, rapidly switched to a handshake. "I am Shin Ken. This is aunt, Kaoru Kamiya, and cousin, Yukio."

"Welcome. I'm Grace Tokugawa. Come in, it's cold out." She waved them inside. "Mr. Morton is quite impressed with both of you boys."

"Thank you," Kenshin said, pleased that Yukio was making a good impression. "Though my English skills not nearly as good as I wish. I am happy he is accepting my translation work."

"Your English is better than my Japanese, I'm afraid. I apologize for not being able to speak in a language you would be more comfortable with."

Kenshin shook his head. "I understand, well enough. I simply apologize for not speaking it very well. I've been in the West many years -- though I do note that British English and American English have some intriguing differences."

She giggled, covering her lips with one dainty hand. "That they do. Mr. Morton said that you recently came here from Britain?"

"Yes." Kenshin nodded. He was prepared to give the usual explanation of his history when a girl appeared at the top of the stairs, behind Grace.

She was small too, fine-boned and delicate. She was clearly wearing a corset, very elegant skirts, and a closely fitted bodice. Grace followed Kenshin's gaze and saw her daughter, who was simply standing there and looking at them. "This is my daughter, May Tokugawa."

May took that as her cue to descend the stairs. Grace said, "May, this is Mr. Ken Shin and Mr. Yukio Himura, and his mother, Kaoru Kamiya. Mr. Shin and Mr. Himura are the boys that Mr. Morton was telling us about."

She held a hand out to Kenshin, after a glance at Yukio. "I'm pleased to meet both of you."

"She reminds me a bit of your sweetheart, Ken," Yukio said, eyes dancing mischievously.

Kaoru smacked him without even looking at him. May followed that exchange with wide eyes, then covered her mouth and giggled.

"Oh, my." Grace blinked. "I suppose -- should we sit down?"

The parlor was very Western, with sofas and a low table laid out with cookies and American tea. After they were seated, Grace said, "My husband will be home in a bit. Tell me, however, where did you get your lovely kimono, Mrs. Kamiya?"

She glanced down. "From Japan?"

"I love the color." Grace sipped her tea. "May, don't you love the color?"

May nodded. "It brings her eyes out. I must say I've never seen anyone who is full-blooded Japanese with eyes like both of yours."

Kenshin heard suspicion in their voices. The similarity of his eye color and Kaoru's were, at least in part, why they generally claimed to be relatedHe said, "In the mountains, sometimes children are born with light-colored hair and pale eyes."

"Hair?"

Kenshin ruffled his hands through his dark-dyed locks, revealing red roots. "Kaoru's is dark. I assure you, however, we are both pure Japanese. It is unusual but not utterly unheard of."

-------------

The front door opened after half an hour of small-talk. Grace rose from her position on the couch and said, "That will be my husband and father-in-law."

She greeted her husband with a peck on the cheek that might not have actually contacted skin, and May's grandfather with a bow. Kaoru and Yukio bowed deeply too; this man was elderly, and bore himself with the dignity of a samurai.

Kenshin, for his part, had _no _problem believing that the old man who'd just stepped in the door was a samurai. Oh, he was dressed in western clothing, and did not have swords at his waist or a long, streaming pony-tail. But he was familiar -- achingly, resoundingly, familiar. Even without his stance -- which at seventy-some years of age was still that of a swordsman -- Kenshin would have known. Because he _knew _him.

After a long moment of startled staring, he bowed very low, very formal, and prayed he would not be recognized.

"Kamiya Kaoru," the old man said, warmly. "Your name is one from the past, that it is. I am most honored to have the daughter of one of the finest men I ever knew in my home."

She blinked at him. Then she smiled in delight, clearly surprised but pleased.

Kenshin winced. Then he said, in as controlled a voice as possible, "Kaoru, this is Tokugawa Hayato."

She blinked, probably registering that he knew the man's name without being introduced. Then she bowed again, a bit lower.

_Why didn't I ask his _nameKenshin could have kicked himself for not asking Morton more questions. The surname Tokugawa wasn't exactly uncommon and, while he'd gotten the girl's name and her father's name, he'd never heard their _grandfather_'s name.

"I am also quite pleased to welcome the son of the great Battousai to my home," the man said. "I must say that when Morton told us that a son of Kenshin Himura was living here with his mother and cousin, I believe he had no idea _why _we would find this so ... impressive."

Grace giggled. May giggled. Since Tokugawa was speaking in Japanese, Kenshin concluded they spoke -- or at least understood -- more of the language than Grace had earlier implied.

Kenshin looked up through the fall of his bangs at them, then glanced back at the old man.

Tokugawa met Kenshin's gaze ... and froze.

It was like looking across the gulf of more than fifty years for Kenshin. This seventy year old man had once been a young man, a few years older than Kenshin, skilled with a sword -- a peer, during the Bakumatsu. One of many men who had lived with Kenshin in the rooming house in Kyoto. His eyes were the same, Kenshin thought -- keen, piercing, suspicious. He still had a crooked tooth in the front, as well, and a scar that split his lower lip and crossed his chin, giving him a somewhat crooked cleft.

That face was wrinkled now, jowls sagging, deep lines around his eyes. Liver spots marked his cheeks, and he had a fat mole on the bridge of his nose that hadn't been there before.

But it was indisputably the same man.

Kenshin wondered what Tokugawa was seeing. A boy, certainly, who was the spitting image of the Battousai whom Tokugawa had known quite well. His hair was dyed dark, but enough time had passed that his roots were clearly showing.

Tokugawa had been an officer -- Kenshin vaguely remembered that he had been a natural born leader, though they'd never worked directly with each other. But certainly, Tokugawa knew Kenshin -- the Battousai had been rather hard to overlook, and probably impossible to forget.

He sensed Kaoru growing alarmed, beside him. He and Hayato had been silent for a long minute, staring at one another. His daughter and granddaughter exchanged a puzzled look. Yukio just seemed baffled.

Tokugawa said, in a particularly dry tone, "I believe you may have a story to tell, Mr. Shin."

Kenshin blinked. And smiled. He remembered that dead-pan wit. Then, with forced good cheer, he chirped, "Perhaps I do, at that!"

_If all else fails, be charming. _

------------------

Something was up with his father and Hayato Tokugawa.

Yukio sat at the table, watching the interplay between the two men. A first course of soup and rolls had been served -- very Western. And over the food, they were watching each other.

The old man had a very odd expression on his face -- he looked rattled, but like he was trying hard to conceal it. Kenshin, by contrast, had assumed that silly grin he used when he was deliberately playing the fool. Yukio had seen his father bullshit everyone from policemen to Jessica's mother with that expression, at various times. It was generally quite effective. However, it didn't seem to working quite the way that it normally did.

Tokugawa seemed _fascinated _by Kenshin's behavior. Every time Kenshin grinned, or favored his granddaughter or daughter with an innocent, violet-eyed blink, or exclaimed, _Oro! _in response to a teasing comment from Kaoru -- the man would shoot a quick, covert _stare_ at Kenshin. Those looks were too fleeting to be rude, but they were very ... assessing.

Kenshin, for his part, was studying Tokugawa right back. Yukio kept catching quick, sober flashes of scrutiny on Kenshin's face before he'd revert back to the clown. Since Kenshin normally didn't play the fool to this level unless something was _wrong_, Yukio was on alert.

However nothing happened, except that the two of them kept looking at each other when they thought the other wasn't watching.

Yukio finally relaxed a bit, since it didn't seem as if swords were about to come out, and tried to take the measure of the girl he was supposed to, possibly, court. She was cute, he supposed -- dainty, small-boned, with a tiny waist bound by a corset and small hands that were smooth and unblemished. Her outfit looked very expensive, and she had exquisite table manners. She had an air of what Mrs. Marshall would refer to as "class and good breeding."

He tried to strike up a conversation with her, "So, what do you do for fun, Miss Tokugawa?"

"I'm very good at embroidery." She nodded her head happily. "I could show you."

_Embroidery_, he thought, wondering if he could summon up sufficient enthusiasm about needlework to avoid being rude.

Then Kenshin said, with a bright-eyed and utterly innocent look, one that bordered on flirtatious, "I happen to be pretty good at needlework too, Miss Tokugawa. Maybe you could show me."

She stared at him, clearly confused by a young man who'd declare an interest in sewing. She froze in place, roll in one hand and a knife with butter on it in the other. "Well, I certainly could, if you're interested."

Hayato was in mid-sip of a cup of tea and suddenly started choking. His son patted him on the back and said, while his father was still coughing, "Mr. Shin, are you seriously admitting to engaging in _embroidery_?"

Kaoru was now snickering into her soup. Yukio wanted to crawl under the table and die. _Father! _He wailed silently. _This is embarrassing! _

Hayato regained his breath, and wheezed out before Kenshin could reply with what Yukio feared would be cheerful confirmation, "Himura-san, I seem to remember you were very good with _other _sharp objects as well."

Kenshin abruptly went deadly serious. In an icily cold voice, and with eyes that gleamed beneath the fall of his bangs, he said, "I still am, Hayato-san. I occasionally find it necessary to protect those I care for."

Hayato went very pale. The scar on his chin flushed dark red against the light color of his skin. For his part, Yukio's food caught in his throat. Had his father just _threatened _their host? And Hayato had called him _Himura-san_. Desperately, he looked at his mother for guidance. Kaoru caught his eye and shook her head with a quick, almost invisible jerk. She didn't want him to react. He was having a very hard time keeping a straight face, however.

Kenshin reached out, grabbed a roll from a pile on the table, and calmly split and buttered it. "However, by choice, I left that life behind a very long time ago. Sewing is so much more ... artistically gratifying, that it is." Kenshin smiled. That smile had teeth, and Yukio would not have wanted to be the one who Kenshin was aiming it at. "I am certain you remember the vows I made at the end of the war, and I assure you I have _kept _them, that I have. I have no wish to ever violate them, and have never found it necessary."

Hayato's eyes widened. Then he inclined his head in acknowledgement. "I do remember. Not just during the ..."

"I am also a very private man." Kenshin interrupted, a little rudely, and very firmly. "Perhaps we can discuss ... old politics ... another time. I doubt your family has much interest in hearing boring old war stories."

Hayato hesitated, then, as Kenshin had done, he reached for a roll. Very calmly he took a bite and said, "So Yukio, what do you think of San Francisco?"

"H-huh?" Yukio stammered, finding himself the center of attention. "Umm. I'm still deciding if I like it, I guess."

Hayato nodded. He looked directly at Kenshin, and, with wide and innocent eyes much like Kenshin's earlier expression, he said, "It is wise to understand a situation before making a decision about it, that it is. "

Kenshin, who had been in mid-sip of a cup of tea, coughed and looked up at Hayato, over the cup.

Hayato, who had mimicked Kenshin's who-little-innocent-me voice _perfectly_, met Kenshin's suspicious look with a goofy, bright grin. "Oro!" the old man said. It was a pitch-perfect imitation of the rurouni, and Yukio could have sworn a pout crossed his father's face in reaction.

As dinners went, Yukio decided, this had to rank up there with among the most interesting of his life.

--------------------


	77. Chapter 77

The Victorian house they had purchased had a small flower bed in the narrow space between the building and the street. Kenshin had always liked growing things -- though he suspected his farmer-father would have been a little bemused to see his oldest son on his knees in an ornamental garden on a sunny Sunday morning, picking sweet peas. His father had been a rather practical man.

The peas were trained on a trellis that concealed the house's foundation. They were ridiculously fragrant and came in all the colors of the rainbow. The plants grew with complete abandon, threatening to engulf the whole house -- but Kenshin had been warned not to let them set seed, or they would die prematurely.

So, on lovely summer morning, he was picking the blooms. A basket full of pea flowers was full to overflowing beside him and at this rate, he'd need to get more cans and jars to stick them in.

"Hi Kenny!"

He glanced over his shoulder. A short munchkin stood on the sidewalk behind him. With good cheer he said, "Hello, Jonathon!"

The kid lived across the street, in a blue Victorian that was a bit smaller than Kenshin's house, but was neatly kept. Blond, fair, and about six years old, he reminded Kenshin a bit of his oldest grandson at the same age -- Kenji's boy had turned eight recently, and was already nearly as tall as Kenshin. Or, since Kenshin hadn't seen him in three months, perhaps even taller than his grandfather now. Jonathon very much seemed like a younger version of his grandson.

"Watcha doing?"

"Picking flowers."

"Can I have one?"

As far as Kenshin was concerned, the kid could have _all _of them. His house and office were already full up with containers of brightly colored blooms. He'd even taken several handsfuls of them down to the local grocer and given them to the women who worked there. He'd pressed a few between books and mailed them to everyone he knew in his letters. Kaoru had observed that it was a shame they weren't edible.

"Sure," he said. "Want to help me pick them?"

The kid's eyes lit up. "Can I?"

"Certainly. And you keep all the one you pick. But you have to be gentle ..." He handed his scissors to the child and showed him how to carefully cut the flowers. He was squatting on his heels, watching the boy hunt for the flowers that were partially hidden by the foliage, when he sensed a warrior's _ki _approaching.

It was, much to Kenshin's complete lack of surprise, Hayato. The old man stood on the sidewalk, and regarded him with his head tilted to one side. Kenshin rose, knees popping and back twinging -- Immortal he might be, but his scars and old injuries made yard work somewhat painful. Still, it was rewarding to see the garden flourish. And it gave him an excuse to sit out front and talk to the neighbors, and sometimes, the neighborhood children came to visit.

He found he was very much missing his own grandchildren.

"Good morning, Hayato-san," Kenshin said, gravely.

"Hmm. Good morning. I see you have a friend." Hayato nodded at the boy.

"I like children, and he's a good kid." Kenshin smiled.

The last time Hayato had seen Kenshin, he had been eighteen -- Kenshin recalled his state of mind back then, and wondered what Hayato made of him now. Aside from the fact that he hadn't aged, he was also a very different man. He wasn't sure if he'd _ever _smiled as a hitokiri, or laughed.

"The last place I ever would have expected to find the Hitokiri Battousai would be puttering in a flower bed," Hayato confessed, confirming Kenshin's suspicion that the man might be a little bit surprised by who Kenshin had become.

"There will be no convincing you that I am Kaoru's nephew and not her husband then, will there?" Kenshin said, quietly.

Hayato drew his finger across his own cheek, indicating Kenshin's scars. "I remember how long your face bled. Also, I saw a police report about your fight in Tokyo with that lunatic, ten years later. The scars you got from Aoshi and Shishio match as well. Burns on your arms, and the marks on your throat. I always meant to look you up after that, because I was curious about how you are doing, but my career's taken me all over the world and very seldom home."

"Aa." Kenshin smiled. In Japanese he said, "I tried to grow a beard to hide my scars on my face, a few months ago. Everyone mocked my efforts."

Hayato was silent, for a long moment. Then he said, "You look like you are still a very young man. I am not surprised that you could not grow facial hair effectively."

"I will answer your questions to the best of my ability, if you'd like to step inside." Kenshin inclined his head gravely towards the house. "However, this one asks that you keep what you are told in the closest of confidence. This one had a very good friend killed due to fear of what he is, that he did. Out of concern for the safety of my friends and family, I ask for your discretion if you wish me to satisfy your curiosity."

Hayato snorted. "How do you know I'm not going to be dangerous to you?"

Kenshin lifted one shoulder in half a shrug. "People are afraid of that which they do not know. You're less likely to be dangerous to me if I answer your questions, that you are. Also, you are more likely to understand why I need privacy."

"Don't go to the newspapers, in other words." Hayato laughed.

"Exactly." Kenshin felt a bit of tension flow out of him, in response to Hayato's words. He turned to the neighbor's boy -- who was still cutting flowers, and not paying much attention to the conversation of adults who were speaking a foreign language -- and switched to English. "Johnny-kun, I need to go inside and speak to this man. Will you run home to your mother now? You can come back later, if you'd like, after you eat lunch. I would appreciate your help later with some weeding and I might have a little money for you if you're a good helper."

The kid's eyes lit up. "After lunch?"

"After lunch," Kenshin said, firmly, hoping he wasn't creating a monster. He handed the basket of sweet peas to the child. "Take these flowers with you. I bet your mom would like them. You can bring my basket back later."

After the boy had scampered back to his house, Hayato said quietly, "You have changed a _great _deal. I remember ... were you a boy _then_? You were so very talented, far more so than a boy your apparent age should have been."

Kenshin blinked, then saw how Hayato could question his age during the Bakumatsu. For all Hayato knew, the young-appearing hitokiri might have been a thousand years old even then. He shook his head. "I was a teenager then, as I appeared. You'll remember, I hope, that I grew a bit between the time I joined, and the time I left."

"If you grew, it was only the tiniest of amounts." Hayato said, with a smile that spread entirely across his face.

"Oro! I did so grow." Kenshin laughed. If Hayato was teasing him about his lack of height, it made Kenshin very optimistic about being able to consider the man a friend. He was never sure how people would react to his secret.

"At any rate, I remember you being very ... cold. You frightened me. I always expected you to snap at some point. You had no sense of humor and you always seemed like you were within a hair's trigger of killing somebody -- possibly, me. And yet, I couldn't help but like you. You were the most honest fighter I've ever known, and one of the purest of soul. It was a pleasure to serve with you then -- to be able to say I knew you, then."

Kenshin didn't know how to react to this, so he gestured at the house. "Come on in. And I apologize for any distress I might have given you. I was not in a very good state of mind then, or for a long time afterwards."

Hayato continued, as Kenshin led the way up the steps to the parlor door, "Now -- you have a lively sense of humor. You laugh and smile and clown around. You care for people very deeply; that's obvious by the way your son and wife regard you. I have seen many men like you who lost the capacity to love. It -- it makes me happy, to see this."

Kenshin shrugged, a bit uncomfortable about the effusive praise. "I became a hitokiri in the first place because I wanted to defend people, to help the less fortunate. I was ... wrong ... when I thought I could change the world by shedding blood, but the belief that one can change one's world if one tries hard enough is a vanity that many young people suffer from."

Hayato smiled. "You are a philosopher, also."

Kenshin pushed the parlor door open. He wasn't sure how to respond to that statement, so he simply smiled.

Hayato, however, wasn't looking at him -- he was staring into the house. He'd obviously been expecting, well, a _parlor_. He wasn't expecting an empty room with a polished wooden floor and few furnishings save a few benches along the wall -- and Kaoru, doing kata in the middle of it. Kaoru was dressed in a yukata, bokken in hand, going through the same complicated steps that she'd done virtually every day for as long as Kenshin had known her.

"I had heard from Saito that you married a woman who was an accomplished kendo master," Hayato murmured.

"Saito talks too much," Kenshin growled, though he registered that Hayato knew "Fujita's" real identity and filed that away for future reference. What else did Hayato know? "And I'd observe that you were quite the dedicated Royalist, long ago, and I am surprised that you would talk to the Saito Hajime."

"You obviously do," Hayato pointed out.

"With great reluctance."

Hayato snorted. "Yes."

Kaoru's kata finally brought her around so that she was facing them. She saw Hayato and abruptly stopped, bowed, and said, "Tokugawa-san! Welcome!"

"Kaoru is going to start a dojo," Kenshin said, "as soon as we can get a business license. There's been a bit of difficulty with that."

Hayato snorted again. "Yes. I imagine."

"Do they make it difficult for everyone," Kaoru asked, "or just us?"

"Just you, probably," Hayato said, cheerfully. "I'll get the ambassador to talk to the right people, if you'd like."

"Oh, no, I don't want to impose ..."

"It is not an imposition. Part of my job here is to represent Japanese citizens and make sure they are treated fairly. We've been having difficulty with the city government for years. " He shook his head. "I'll get it taken care of tomorrow. The woman who handles business licenses for the city _always _denies applications from us lower-class citizens unless we intervene. Even then ... but I can pull a few strings for you."

"I would appreciate it," Kaoru said. "I hate to complain, but it's been a little ridiculous the way that they keep losing our papers, or finding petty things wrong with them."

---------------------

"What did you tell him?" Kaoru asked, later, after Kenshin had seen Hayato to the door much later that afternoon. Kenshin had spoken to Hayato privately, for hours; he had gotten a good feel for the man, and thought he'd found a friend and a peer. It was a good feeling to know there was somebody in the town he could trust.

"The truth." Kenshin walked into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee from the kettle on the stove. He added cream from the icebox. He'd recently discovered a fondness for the drink. He leaned back against the counter and regarded his wife gravely. "It's not as if I could lie and deny who I was. We lived together for several months in a rooming house, and saw each other regularly for a couple of years after. We fought back to back a few times, on fields of battle. He was a very good swordsman, and I apparently created a big impression with him."

"Will there be trouble because he knows?"

"I don't believe so." He sipped the coffee. "I think he's ... impressed ... by me."

"You have a fan," she teased.

"Mmm. I wish to be nobody's hero, but better he like me than fear me." Kenshin set the coffee down and wrapped his arms around her, and regarded her blue eyes from a couple of inches away. "Yukio's at the office until later ..."

"... are you thinking what I'm thinking?" She giggled.

"I think my wife looks very attractive wearing my old yukata. You should wear it more often."

She giggled again. He loved that sound; she was feeling good -- happy. He let go of her and gave her a shove in the general direction of the stairs and their bedroom upstairs. He was following her -- rather close on her heels -- when someone knocked at the door.

"Oh, rats." He slapped himself on the forehead comically. "I told Johnny to come by after lunch and I'd work in the garden with him."

"We can pretend we're not home ..."

"No, I _promised_. This ..." he grabbed her and kissed her quickly, eliciting another giggle and a swat aimed at his head, "... will have to wait for a bit."

She smacked him on the butt as he headed for the door. Laughing, he opened it -- and found that he was looking up at Jonathon's mother. She was a tall, broad, severe woman -- German, he'd heard. Her brown hair was swept back into a stern bun and her blue eyes glinted with anger. She had her son by the wrist, and she said, "I must apologize, Mr. Shin. My son has taken some of your flowers."

"Oh!" He looked down at the boy. Obviously, there had been a miscommunication.

"I'm sorry," the kid said, obediently, while staring at the ground somewhere near Kenshin's feet. "I stoled your flowers."

"No, he did not," Kenshin said, firmly. It was clear to Kenshin that the woman was making him confess to a crime he hadn't committed. "Mrs. Barth, your son help me pick them. I sent some home with him. It's okay. No theft. I have lots."

"He said," real anger touched her face now, "he said you gave them to him for _me_. I thought he was lying. Are you saying you're giving me flowers, Mr. Shin?"

"Huh?" He was conscious of Kaoru standing right behind him, deadly silent. Hopefully, _Kaoru _would believe his protests of innocence! "No, no, not like that! I just give flowers to son, for son to give you."

"So you _did _send my son home with flowers for me." She took a step closer, looming tall in his doorway. Mad now, he refused to back up and stood his ground. She continued, "I cannot believe you had the brass to do such a thing! A chink, give _me _flowers! Did you think I'd _appreciate _your unwholesome attention? God above, everything that they say about you people is true! How _dare _you! I'm going to go speak to the authorities. I can't believe this!"

She turned about, still holding her son by the wrist, and dragged him back across the street. Kenshin stared after her, mouth hanging open. He was stunned by the anger in her voice -- he'd never been hit with so much hatred in response to a kind action before.

Kaoru's hands descended on his shoulders. She squeezed, and said in an icily angry tone of voice, "That woman is going to be trouble."

"All I did was ... I was trying to be nice!" Kenshin spun to face his wife. "I thought the little boy would give his mommy a bouquet and she'd be happy. I didn't think she'd think they were from me!"

"She's just making trouble." Kaoru shook her head. He was relieved that Kaoru believed him -- but then, to think she wouldn't trust him would be almost insulting to her. She _knew _his opinion of her. She added, in English, "Bitch."

----------------

The cops showed up a couple hours later: a young one and an old one.

Kenshin, expecting them, had changed into a business suit and tie. He suspected his old trousers and the worn, fraying shirt he had been wearing for yard work would not impress the police. Kaoru, equally forewarned, was wearing her finest western fashions.

"Are you Ken Shin?"

"Yes sir." Kenshin did his best to minimize his Japanese accent, and emphasize the British one. "I expect you're here because the lady across the street misunderstood ..."

"We're here because you made unwanted advances on the good woman." The younger cop interrupted him, and pushed into the house past Kenshin, without invitation.

"I am sorry if she misunderstood, but truthfully, there is no problem here." Kenshin kept his voice as level as possible.

The other cop grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him against the wall. Kenshin allowed himself to be manhandled, and suffered through a rather thorough frisking. His sword was upstairs in a hidden compartment under his bedroom floorboards. All the officer found on him was a pen knife, a few paper-wrapped hard candies, some pennies and a dime and a five yen coin, and Kenshin's wallet.

Kenshin said quietly, "I'm a citizen. You find my paperwork from being sent through Angel Island in my billfold."

"A citizen." The man said, skeptically. "You've got quite an accent for a citizen."

"I've spent the last thirteen years in England." He tried to emphasize the British accent that he knew overlaid his Japanese one. His speech had gotten quite a few comments, some of them quite complimentary, from Americans. They said he sounded exotic and European.

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen -- owe!" Kenshin protested his arm being twisted behind his back. He was being handcuffed, he realized belatedly. He didn't have to feign indignant shock when he said, "Why are you doing this? I haven't done anything wrong!"

"The lady says you sent flowers to her, and that you've been leering at her. You're in America, now, buddy." The cop smacked him across the top of the head with far more force than Kenshin thought was strictly necessary. "You need to learn that sort of thing might be acceptable in China, but not ..."

"I'm not Chinese!" Kenshin was seriously tempted to fight back. He took a deep breath. "My father was Japanese, a trader. He had a white wife, he married her back East. I was born in America ... I'm Japanese and American!"

Lies, but ones he'd rehearsed. He _had _to stick to his story. And if the cops got motivated to send a wire to New York to verify his story, he hoped the history that the lawyer had set up for him held up under scrutiny. It _wouldn't _if they were able to check with Japan -- Kaoru had no brother -- but that, he judged, was a remote risk. There was a slight language problem, and very few people who spoke both languages.

"Like father, like son, eh?" The man shoved him hard against the wall. "Around here, we don't approve of chinks marrying white women. It's _wrong_. It's against the law. Maybe somebody forgot to tell you that in Angel Island, eh boy?"

"I gave the flowers to her child!"

"Shut up!" The younger man smacked him.

"Oh, that's not how you shut a damned yellow bastard up." The older man spun him around and then drove his fist into Kenshin's gut. Kenshin saw the blow coming -- sensed it, in the flare of the man's ki, as well -- but forced himself not to fight back.

"Kenshin!" Kaoru screamed, as he vomited up everything in his stomach. He _hurt_, and his vision dimmed. When the cop let go of him, he sank to his knees. He wondered if he was dying -- had they ruptured something?

"Kaoru!" He groaned, in Japanese, well aware that to fight back just was not an option. "Remember I'm Immortal ..."

"But they're hurting you!"

"Shut up!" The cop kicked him in the thigh, knocking him completely to the ground. "I said, shut up!"

Then there was a tremendous blow to his head. And darkness descended. His last conscious memory was of Kaoru, screaming at the police in furious Japanese.

----------------

"Father? Father?"

Kenshin opened his eyes, blinked a couple of times, and tried to figure out who was calling his name. "Kenji ...? Did I sleep in ...?"

------------------

Later, he woke to a dark room. He recognized he was in Yukio's bedroom, and was alone.

The room smelled of vomit. His mouth tasted of it, too, and his hair was damp -- someone had cleaned him up. He wondered if he'd died. He suspected he hadn't; he had no memory of an afterlife. Still, it was disconcerting to wake up alone, in the dark.

His head was pounding. He ran a hand through his hair and found a healing gash at the base of his skull. His stomach hurt, and when he lifted his shirt up, he found multiple deep purple and yellow bruises.

_If I wasn't Immortal, _he thought, _I'd be critically ill, if not dead. _

It was all so senseless. That lack of logic was disorienting. He could understand beating someone up if they'd done something to warrant it. Hells, he'd left more than one bad guy with bruises and broken bones as richly deserved punishment for misdeeds. However, Kenshin knew in his heart that he'd done absolutely nothing wrong.

And even if he had presented the lady with flowers in an attempt to court her -- that wasn't exactly a capital crime.

After standing up -- the world spun around him for a moment -- he went in search of Kaoru and Yukio. He did _not _call out for them; he sensed more than two people in the house.

Kaoru was in her room down the hall; he had no difficulty identifying the angry flare of her _ki_. She was brassed off and ready for war. When he opened his son's bedroom door, he could hear her voice as well, complaining angrily, "Ichi! Ichi! Damned police! How dare they claim to uphold the law! No worse than common thugs!"

His son was standing in the hallway, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. When the door clicked open, he looked up, and then his eyes lit in relief. "Father!"

"Who's in there with her?"

"Hayato sent a doctor he knew."

Kenshin ran a hand over his face. "What happened?"

"They beat the shit out of her." Yukio said, with tight-lipped anger.

Kenshin's vision grew first dim, and then red. There was a roaring sound in his ears. Only the fact that his sword was _in _the bedroom, in the secret compartment in the floorboards under the bed, kept him from charging out of the room and beheading a few mortals.

"Father?" Yukio sounded frightened. "Father, your eyes ..."

His _ki _must be bleeding into his vision, showing amber and gold. Yukio had seldom seen him this furious. Kenshin realized he was scaring his son and took a deep, deep breath. Going into a fight _angry _was not the way to deal with this. "I should have fought them ..." he whispered. "I should have _fought _them. I should never have allowed this to happen!"

He struggled for focus, and calm. It was very difficult. The thought of Kaoru being beaten made him so furious he felt nauseous. "Yukio, I'm sorry. I thought they would rough me up. I didn't think ... Kaoru, Gods, they could have killed her."

"She said it was policemen."

"Yeah. The lady across the street called them." Kenshin glanced at Yukio and decided that fifteen-almost-sixteen was old enough to understand this. "You know her little boy?"

"Yeah. He's a cute kid. He's come over a few times to talk, when I'm outside."

"I gave him some sweet peas to take home to his mother. I figured he'd get a kick out of giving his mom the flowers." Kenshin ground out, "She thought I was making an advance on her."

"... an advance?" Yukio stared at his father in dismay. "But you ... mother ... but ..."

"Obviously, she was mistaken. But she summoned the cops."

"But ..." Yukio hunched his shoulders. "But that's wrong. You weren't."

Kenshin turned to the wall and punched it -- not hard enough to break a hole in the plaster, but the family photographs and Kenji's paintings on the wall shook. He felt helpless. He had not protected Kaoru.

He should have fought back himself, to avoid this.

He should never have brought them here in the first place.

"I should have left." Kenshin pushed his head against the wall. "Yukio, I should have left you all in Britain. Darius tried to tell me, but I didn't have the will to break your mother's heart."

Yukio rested a hand on his shoulder. "Father? It'll be okay. She'll be fine. She's more angry than badly hurt. Bruises, and they broke her wrist, but she'll be fine."

"And next time?" Kenshin turned to face his son. He challenged him with the question -- he wanted Yukio to be prepared, if he did decide that it was time to leave. It crossed his mind that he could send them back to Britain and stay here alone. It would be safer for them.

"Mother would rather be dead than parted from you." Yukio suddenly hugged his father. Kenshin, who had been expecting his hot-headed son to explode at Kenshin's question about _next time_, surprised him with the embrace. He stiffened, and then returned it. Gods, he loved this boy. Yukio whispered, "You'd break her heart if she left."

Yukio's eyes were troubled when he finally released his father. "You're not going to leave, are you? I ... I'd be pretty upset too."

"Let me ... let's see how things play out." Kenshin ran a hand over his face. It wouldn't just be Kaoru who would be devastated if he sent them home to Britain -- or Tokyo -- and parted company with them. And both of them had already chosen to stay with him, even knowing that it might be dangerous. He would ask them to revisit that decision, and perhaps they might chose to move elsewhere, but ... well, it was, he decided, their decision to make. Yukio was old enough to understand the risks about staying here. Kaoru had no illusions.

"You're not going to go kill the cops, are you?" Yukio added. "That'd be stupid."

"No. You know my opinion on that. I don't kill." He paused, then added blackly, "Unfortunately. Yukio, what happened after I passed out?"

"I came home and found mother trying to drag you up the stairs." He ran a hand over his hair. "She was pretty badly beaten, and her wrist was all messed up. I carried you up to my room, and then went and asked Hayato to recommend a doctor for mother, and for help getting you out of sight. I thought he knew your secret from the way he was acting at the dinner, and I thought he was as good as anyone to ask."

"Good thinking." Kenshin blew out a sharp breath. "And yes, I think you can trust Tokugawa. We knew each other during the revolution. He's an honorable man. A friend. He is definitely someone you can go to, if you need help, and it was good judgment on your part to do so."

Yukio flushed at the praise. "Mom's gonna be okay, Dad ..."

"Ichi-ichi-ichi!" Came from inside the room. Kaoru sounded more angry than hurt. A long string of descriptive language followed, regarding the likely ancestry of two police officers, their family, and, additionally, their physical appearance and personal grooming habits. According to Kaoru, both men were ugly, had lice, and were the sons of mongrel dogs.

Kenshin snorted. "She's tough. I'm somewhat worried about the doctor. I take it, though, that I'm not 'dead'?"

"Oh, no. Just very heavy. I think you need to lay off the cream in your coffee, Pops."

"Hey, I haven't gained that much weight. And your biscuits are at fault for that!"

His son smirked. Then sobered. "We told the doctor you were out running an errand. You're safe to go in, now. You won't have to explain being dead to him."

"Can you see any injuries on me?"

"Just some stuff that looks old," Yukio said, after a quick but critical once-over of his father's face and arms. "Mom and I washed the blood out of your hair while we were waiting for the doctor for her. We didn't know how long you'd be out and it was pretty gross."

Kaoru had washed his hair with a broken arm of her own ... sometimes, he really was awed by her. Kenshin took a deep breath, then pushed his bedroom door open. "Hey," he greeted both Kaoru and the doctor -- who proved to be a small, very elderly, Chinese man no taller than Kenshin himself. "Kaoru, are you okay?"

"She'll be fine," the doctor assured him with calm cheer.

"If angry as hell," Kaoru added.

"Thank you for helping my aunt," Kenshin said, bowing to the man.

The doctor bowed low back. In fairly good English, he said, "Your aunt is tough woman. Most tough."

"That she is." Kenshin could agree with that. The doctor didn't know even half that truth.

"Also, I am glad I not understand Japanese."

Kenshin laughed. The doctor's manner put him at ease; if the man was joking, perhaps things were not as awful as they seemed. Kaoru, disgruntled, said in English, "I translate, if you like."

She was seated on the edge of the bed. Her arm was in a sling, wrapped in a cast, and she had a rapidly blackening eye. The doctor was dabbing mercurochrome on her knuckles -- Kenshin recognized abrasions from throwing punches, and was quietly proud of her.

She looked up at him, and smiled bravely. She switched back to Japanese, "They were going to ... Kenshin, after they knocked you out, they were going to ... I didn't tell Yukio ..."

He swallowed hard. "They didn't, did they?"

"No." She hugged herself. She looked small, and miserable, and deflated -- the anger abruptly vanished from her eyes and was replaced by a glimpse of inner terror. His lingering amusement at the doctor's wry words vanished.

The doctor patted her on the shoulder; it was a friendly, comforting gesture. Then he repeated to Kenshin, "Your aunt will be okay."

"Kaoru," he glanced at the doctor, then switched to Japanese and said urgently, "Kaoru, I'm _sorry. _I owe you the deepest of apologies. I believed that they would strike me a few times and then take me away to jail, where we could resolve things with legal means. And so, I allowed them to make me helpless and to take their spite out on me. I thought submission to the authorities was the best way to defuse the situation ... Then I was unable to defend you, when you truly needed me."

She reached a hand out and squeezed his hand. "If you had fought them? What then? Even if you had beaten them off, they were not thugs that you could leave broken and bleeding with no repercussions."

He hadn't thought beyond that point.

"Both of them had _guns_, Kenshin. If they had killed you, what then? Or if you were imprisoned?"

"Oh, Gods, they could have shot you."

She'd fought two men with guns off -- two men much larger than she was, two men who were evil enough to beat a man who'd done no wrong nearly to death, and then to, apparently, contemplate rape of an elderly woman.

She looked away. "The younger one threatened to kill me. The older one said he wasn't going to shoot an old hag. He called me a _hag_."

"They won't get away with this." He spoke through gritted teeth. "I promise you, Kaoru. They won't get away with this."

At that moment, with impeccably bad timing, another Immortal's incredibly powerful _ki _washed across Kenshin's awareness. He hissed and straightened up, staring towards the window.

"What is it?" Kaoru said.

"Company." He hadn't sensed another Immortal since arriving in San Francisco, though doubtless in a city this size there were a few around. In truth, he hadn't seen another one other than Shura and Darius in years. He avoided strange Immortals with determined vigilance.

This wasn't Shura; she was halfway back to Japan by now, her ship having left ten days ago. And it could hardly be Darius. Anyway, the buzz didn't feel like either of theirs.

His sword was under the bed. The doctor was in the room. Likely, there was no way to get the doctor _out _of the room in time to grab the sword, if the other Immortal was coming calling.

He took a deep breath. There were bokken downstairs that he could use -- not much defense against a skilled swordsman wielding good steel, but better than nothing. However, doubted the other Immortal would attack him in his home with witnesses present and neighbors around. He would just have to take his chances.


	78. Chapter 78

Kenshin reached the first floor just as the other Immortal knocked.

He picked up a bokken off the rack on the wall, then took a moment to steel himself for possible combat. He set aside his anger and guilt at himself over Kaoru's injuries, and let go of his rage towards the police. Such feelings were not useful in a fight. Once he was calm, and focused, he opened the door.

A man stood there in a business suit and tie, well dressed: the other Immortal. The man was tall, lean, with short-cropped brown hair, blue eyes, and an amused smile on his face. The other Immortal simply looked at the bokken in Kenshin's hands. Kenshin glared upwards, daring him to say anything.

He was just not in the mood for any nonsense. He would not have been surprised if his eyes were flaring gold. Certainly, any other swordsmen with any ability at all to read _ki_could that he was already pissed off.

The other Immortal scratched his jaw. He had a little beard stubble, perhaps a day or two's growth. However, he didn't comment on Kenshin's weapon. He did look very amused.

Kenshin, bristling in reaction to what he took to be a condescending expression, said, "What do you want, Connor?"

Conner MacLeod said, in a tone of voice that matched the humor evident on his face, "I heard you were in town in a letter from Hideo. I think he heard from Darius. I thought I'd stop by and pay my regards."

"It is _not _a good time. Leave." Conner was speaking English; Kenshin didn't bother. Conner's Japanese was perfectly adequate, if memory served, and English didn't have quite the ability to express the extreme level of impatience that he could with his native tongue.

"You are one unfriendly sonofabitch, you know that? Plus, do you really have to tell everyone that you beat me?" Conner switched to Japanese except for the 'sonafabitch.'

Kenshin considered that for a long, hostile moment. Then he said, "You picked a fight with the Hitokiri Battousai in Tokyo, all those years ago. A little mocking from your friends is a small price to pay for surviving that fight."

"... Wait. _You_?" Conner blinked several times. He rocked back on his heels and stared down at Kenshin. "Well. That explains why you're still alive. I figured you'd be long dead."

Apparently, Conner did know who the Battousai was. Given his reasonably fluent command of the language, Kenshin figured he'd spent some time in Japan and wasn't surprised by this knowledge. And yet, he hadn't known Kenshin Himura was the same man. Kenshin would have found this a lot more amusing if he wasn't in a very foul mood.

"MacLeod-san, this is truly a bad time." Kenshin moved to shut the door.

"Wait!" Conner put a hand out. "Can I help with something? You look like you've been in a fight recently."

His wounds were already mostly healed; Conner was factoring in Immortal recovery times. Kenshin hesitated a long, long moment. Then he said, "My wife was injured by the police. They beat me nearly to death. We didn't do _anything_ wrong. If you don't mind, I'd like to get back to her and reassure her that there will not be another fight today."

"Aw, shit." Conner frowned. "Was it because you're Japanese?"

"Seemingly. I was accused of unwholesome advances towards the neighbor across the street." Kenshin took a deep breath. "Conner. Please. Later, we can talk. Now, I must go."

He shut the door. He could sense Conner's buzz for a couple of minutes after going back upstairs to Kaoru; he wondered if he should have been more friendly to the man.

He was another Immortal, Kenshin told himself firmly. With very rare exceptions, such as Darius and Shura, he saw no reason to associate with other Immortals. Particularly ones who'd tried, once upon a time, to kill him just to prove a point. He was a forgiving man, but even he had limits.

------------------

Conner stared up at the large Victorian house. Himura Kenshin was apparently doing well for himself, he thought. Hideo -- who always knew everyone else's business in Japan, useful man that he was -- said that Kenshin's son had married a rich woman and Kenshin and his wife and other children were reaping the benefits.

Nothing wrong with a little bit of nepotism, Conner figured.

However, he was frankly surprised that Kenshin was still alive. It wasn't the first time Conner had met other Immortals who refused to play the game, but it was rare that they lived for very long unless they retreated to holy ground. Darius had described Kenshin as a, "Believer in Gods, a skeptic regarding religion," which made Conner suspect that Kenshin wasn't likely to become a monk and hide out in an abbey while thumbing his nose at the Game any time soon.

Kenshin was apparently perfectly capable of thumbing his nose at the Game without the protection of holy ground.

He sighed. He'd have to try later. Judging by Kenshin's reaction, something bad had happened. However, he doubted it was Immortal type trouble; with four hundred thousand people in the general area, there were a few Immortals, but nobody seemed especially likely to create trouble. That didn't mean that the local Immortants wouldn't _find _trouble -- witness the hasty departure of his clansman and Duncan's little Japanese student a few years back -- but mostly, things had been peaceful locally between them.

Macleod tried to tell himself it was concern for a nice man with a wife and kid to look out for, and not frank curiosity that sent him heading off to the Japanese consulate. It had only taken him a moment's thought to settle on that destination. Hayato Tokugawa was the biggest gossip in the world, had a granddaughter about the same age as Kenshin's son, and if he knew Hank, the man was probably working late even on a Sunday night.

_Concern. Right. I'm just concerned. _

Given the small size of the Japanese community here, likely Hank knew Kenshin. If he was at all lucky, the old man would know what was up with Kenshin. If Conner bought him a few drinks, he figured he might tell him what was up. And -- if Hank didn't know Kenshin, he ought to clue Hank in that the man might be needing help. And then Hank could figure out what had Kenshin's shorts in a twist and report back.

Ah, screw it. He was just being nosy. But finding out a little more about an Immortal who was demonstrably very good with a sword was not a bad thing. Conner hadn't survived several centuries by not being deliberately savvy about his peers.

Since Kenshin avoided other Immortals like they were plague carriers, with a few very rare exceptions, it stood to reason that he might start in Kenshin's own community for useful gossip.

_Tokugawa, old friend, let's see how drunk I can get you.  
_

---------------

Kenshin was seated on the back porch, back to the wall, one knee tucked to his chest. He had a cup of coffee in one hand, but wasn't drinking it. His eyes were a million miles away. It was early morning, and Yukio didn't think his father had gone to bed.

Yukio stepped out the back door. "Mom's still asleep. Should I fix breakfast for her?"

Kenshin glanced over at his son. "She took some laudenum early this morning. She'll probably sleep in. I'll make something for her when she wakes up later -- I'm not going to the office today."

"What are we going to do?"

"You are going to go to work." Kenshin sipped his coffee. "And do me a favor and translate those manifests for the Lady Fair's cargo, will you -- and there's a couple letters for the buyers on my desk that need to be done, and some tax forms that need filling out. Shura should be back in port by tomorrow morning at the latest and it all needs to be done before she sails out again."

"Yeah, I can do that. I'll stay a little late. Morton's got me doing a bunch of bookkeeping too. I really hate accounting."

"Thank you." His father sighed.

"Father, what are we going to do about the bastards who hurt mother?"

His father's expression was bleak. Yukio had never quite seen that look on Kenshin's face before. "What would you suggest we do, Yukio?"

"They need to be punished!"

"I agree with that. How?"

"I -- aren't you going to, you know, hunt them down?"

"And what? Beat them up?" Kenshin dashed the remains of his coffee into the bushes. He rose, stiffly enough that Yukio suspected he'd been sitting there for several hours. "I would dearly love to do that. And what would you propose I do when they come to arrest me? If I'm in jail, I can't defend you two against future threats." In a softer tone of voice, he added, "You'd both be alone."

"Can't you -- take it to the newspapers -- or legal means or --" Yukio felt his voice rising. He forged ahead anyway, "Father, we have to do something! This isn't right! They can't just get away with this!"

His father just looked at him.

"If they're hurting mother, they're hurting other people! We have to _do _something! You've always taught me we should protect the weak, the innocent. Mom can defend herself. But what if it was somebody else's mother? They probably _have _hurt other people!"

Yukio took a deep breath and said something he had been scared to even voice. "They tried to ... they more than tried to beat her up, didn't they?"

His father, very softly, said, "Yes. She fought them off."

He saw red. Never in his life had he wanted someone dead like this -- dead, after cruel and vicious suffering. "We have to _do _something! We can't just stand by and let this -- and not take action! They tried to hurt my mother!"

Kenshin, without a word, walked past him into the kitchen. He rinsed his mug out in the sink, wiped it out with a dish towel, and hung it up on a peg on the wall.

"Father! We have to do something!"

"I agree." Kenshin's voice was very quiet. Yukio had to stop ranting to hear him speak. "I have not yet figured out how. I cannot beat them senseless, much as I would like to, because the end result of that would be to leave you without a father and your mother without a husband. I have little hope of going to the English-language newspapers and having a sympathetic audience. I am not certain there is any legal action I could take; it would be their word against ours, and who would the courts be more likely to believe? And as for their superiors -- well. I do not think that would help."

"It's not fair!"

"Go to work, Yukio." Kenshin's voice was gentle. "I'll see you this evening."

---------------

Yukio went to work, though he found it difficult to focus. He couldn't get his mother's face out of his mind -- her blackened eye, and the furious anger that he suspected masked real fear. They'd hurt her.

His father's attitude rankled. They _had _to do something. He'd always been taught to stand up for what was right; now, Kenshin seemed almost beaten. He had a hard time stomaching the idea of doing nothing. Somewhere, somehow, there had to be a way to get justice.

And if they didn't stop the cops, likely, other people would be hurt as well.

"You're such a hard worker," Morton said, walking through the office. There was praise and respect in the man's voice. "But you should go home, or you'll turn into a pumpkin."

Yukio glanced up from the ship's manifest that he was translating into Japanese. He was surprised to discover that it was night -- the windows that looked out onto a busy street showed fog and darkness. Because he was preoccupied it had taken him longer than expected to balance several dozen vendor accounts. He was completing the last bit of Kenshin's work now -- fortunately, his father's workload was not particularly heavy.

"Wish my boy would work like you do," Morton said, conversationally. "You two are about the same age. He's a lazy snot, though."

"It's expected of me." Yukio said, quietly. He finished the manifest and blew on the ink to dry it. "And this is an excellent opportunity. I'm pleased to help Jessica, too -- if not for her, I wouldn't have this job. Or a lot of other things. She's like a big sister to me."

"We're going to miss you when you go to school in the fall," Morton said. "You do the work of two men. Literally, today."

"I'll still work in the evenings and on Saturdays." Yukio shrugged. "My future's here."

"You know, kid, have you ever thought about going to college?" Morton leaned on the desk. "You've got the discipline and the smarts. Working in the family business is all well and good, but you could be a lawyer or a doctor, easy."

"Think they'd actually _let _me into college? I'm not exactly white."

"Sure. There's some colleges you could attend. You'd have to check around, but I'm sure there's at least a few that would let you enroll."

Yukio blew out a short, sharp sigh. "Nah. My dad wants me to work for Jessica."

"Mmmph. Well, if you ever change your mind, let me know. I could help you -- I know a few people who might be useful."

"Thanks." Yukio stood up. "I appreciate it. Though I'm not sure I'd want to be a lawyer -- or a doctor -- any more than I'd want to manage Jessica's office here. They all sound about the same degree of boring. No offense, but if I'm going to be bored, at least I can be bored right away, without spending years and lots of my family's money going to college first."

Morton laughed at Yukio's tone, which was wry. "Do you want a ride home, kid?"

Morton had an automobile -- a Model T -- and had given Yukio and his father lifts home fairly regularly. Kenshin had recently made noises about buying a car rather than a horse and buggy; however, he had also expressed worry about "standing out" -- something that now seemed like a more plausible concern to Yukio now. _Likely, somebody would accuse us of stealing it if they witnessed us driving it. _

He declined Morton's offer with a quick shake of his head. "It's okay. The street cars are still running. I'll be fine."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. It's late." Morton's house was in the exact opposite direction from theirs. He didn't want to inconvenience the man this late in the evening. "Your wife's probably waiting for you for dinner."

"Yeah, probably. You're a good kid, Yukio." Morton smiled at him, then headed for the door. "Shut the light off and lock up, will you?"

--------------

Outside, it was cold -- not bitterly cold, as London could be, but damply cold. Yukio hunched down in his coat and headed for the street car line, a short block away.

The car, when it arrived, was nearly empty. After dropping a couple of coins in the box, he sat down at the back, and closed his eyes as the car lurched forward. The rattle of the wheels on the track was soothing -- a monotonous, steady, rhythmic rattle and clatter.

At the next stop, a pair of girls got on. He was alerted to their presence by giggling -- when he opened his eyes he met the gaze of a pair of brown eyes. The girls were his age, dressed in the uniforms of maids. Both appeared Chinese and when they realized he was awake, they hastily averted their eyes and wouldn't look at him.

"Hey," he said, in English.

They responded in shy-sounding Chinese.

"Do you speak English?"

"You no speak Chinese?" One of them said, heavily accented.

"I'm not Chinese."

"Oh." They conversed rapidly together for a minute, then suddenly rose and moved a couple seats farther up the bus. Apparently, they didn't approve of his not-Chinese-ness, though he suspected the giggles earlier had been because of his appearance and his fashionable suit. He knew he was good looking; it was something of a running joke in the family that if he and his father were together anywhere, young girls _would _notice them.

Today, he just found this depressing. He could look like an young God and he'd still be unacceptable to the majority of the people in the world.

The girls started giggling again, and talking behind their hands. He had no idea what they were saying.

The trolley was abruptly claustrophobic. He was a long way and a lot of hills from home, and this was likely the last street car to run tonight. However, he reached up and tugged the strap to stop. The driver let him off. He couldn't bear hearing them talk about him one minute longer.

The exercise helped, a bit, to clear his head. He pushed himself to walk faster, boots clicking on damp cobblestones. The air was chilly, and he couldn't see more than a few hundred yards through the fog. He hunched down into his coat, and thought fondly of summer in England -- which was, at least, _summer_. This chilly, foggy July weather was just not right.

This time of year, back home, the family was likely taking a holiday on the coast. He missed the shore -- he missed the fun with the family. He'd learned to swim in the surf when he was small and had made endless sand castles.

There would be no swimming in the ocean here. The water was frigid.

His father was clearly having second thoughts about coming to American -- there had been prejudice in Britain, of course, but they'd been protected by Jessica's money and the Trevor family social status. More than once he'd heard them called, disparagingly, "Lady Jessica's pet Mongoloids" -- but few had ever dared do more than talk. Byron had also been a lightning rod for any trouble, through no real fault of his own; if anyone wanted to cause trouble for Yukio's brother and sister-in-law they generally went after Kenji's fey brother and not the lesser target of the Himura family.

Here, nobody knew her, and they were deliberately being low key about their ties to Britain for fear someone might do too much checking and find a photograph of "Shinta."

Yukio wished they could all go home; they had been happy there. But Kenshin couldn't ever return to England, and he knew his mother wouldn't go without Kenshin. _He _could go but ...

Well, he tried to picture a world without his mother and father in it. A world without his father's laughter and gentle wisdom, smiles and unqualified support; a world without Kaoru's sharp humor and pushy, impatient guidance. He simply couldn't envision it.

_Mama_, he thought, _they could have killed you. Or hurt you ..._

The thought chilled him more than the weather did.

He walked for half an hour, hands in his pockets. The fog got thicker, swirling around street lights. The air got colder. He wished he hadn't gotten off the street car now; he wondered if his parents were worried about him.

Ahead, he heard a girl scream, "Let go of me!"

It was a startling shout against the muffled quiet of the fog. Yukio froze for half a second, then burst into a run. That didn't sound good.

"Let go! Let go!"

Around the corner, he skidded to a halt. A girl -- dressed in ragged, worn, homemade clothing, a suitcase in one hand, was on her knees on the ground.

Two cops had her cornered in the doorway of a bank building. A streetlight cast a bright golden glow over the scene.

"Shouldn't be out here this late ..." One of the cops grabbed a handful of her hair.

"I don't have anywhere to go!" She tried to pull away.

"Vagrant." The other cop said. "We've got laws against vagrancy."

"I don't have anywhere to go!" she repeated. Yukio, from twenty feet away, could see tears streaking down her dirty face.

"Well, you can't stay here." The cop yanked her to her feet by her hair.

"OWwwwwww! My stuff, my stuff!" She grabbed frantically for her suitcase, which she'd dropped.

One cop was younger, with a handlebar mustache and blond hair. The other had a grizzled beard, a recently broken nose, and two black eyes.

Yukio didn't know what they planned to do with the girl. Frankly, he didn't care, except that it was likely going to be bad. They hadn't seen him yet -- he glanced around, took stock of his surrounding, then backed into the shadows of an alley. His foot bumped an empty beer bottle. There were several on the ground. He picked one up, hefted it, judged the weight for a moment.

The girl was screaming, now. He saw the flash of a nightstick as the cop whacked her in the head with it. He had not seen why the man had decided to hit her, and suspected the reason was inconsequential and irrelevant. They just wanted to be thugs.

Yukio chuckled the beer bottle. It nailed the older cop squarely in the head. "Hey! Son of a bitch!" He shouted. He flung two more empty bottles. One missed and shattered against the wall, but the other hit Mustache in the jaw.

With roars of anger, they charged after him.

He _ran. _He ran like his life depended on it. Likely, it did. The cops streaked after him. He would never have guessed that the two of them would be that fleet of foot. Heart pounding, he kept to the dark alleys and shadowed ways, and finally lost them by vaulting to the top of a block fence. From there he scrambled to the top of a house, shinnying up a drain pipe. He took to the rooftops, and quickly left them behind. The buildings in this part of town were very close together and he found he could fairly easily jump from roof to roof for blocks at a time.

Half an hour later, when he was satisfied nobody was pursuing him, he stuck his tongue out in the presumed direction of the policemen. "Nyah, nyah. I learned acrobatics from my father, morons."

He was pretty sure they hadn't seen his face. Next time, however, he vowed he'd have a mask. Because harassing the cops had just been too satisfying. And he suspected he'd given the girl more than ample time to escape.

Hands in his pockets, he headed home. Hassling the cops had been satisfying, and he was pretty sure both blows had hurt. However, he knew he couldn't keep getting away with hit-and-run vigilantism. Sooner or later, he'd get caught. And then his mother would kill him, if the cops didn't. It was frustrating.

And the worst part was, for every idiot like the neighbor across the street, or the thugs masquerading as police, he figured there were plenty more good people. Folks like Morton, or Dr. Timothy and his wife -- they wouldn't approve, at all, if they knew what the cops were up to. But he had no proof, and right now, he knew -- as his father had said -- it was his word against theirs.

He wished he had proof.

Proof.

_Proof_.

A light bulb -- more of a flash bulb, really -- suddenly went on. Yukio, grinning, broke into a run for home. He had an idea -- he thought it was a good idea that even his parents would agree with -- and a plan.


	79. Chapter 79

It was very late when Yukio reached the house, but the light was on in the third-floor study. He climbed the stairs, suspecting his father had stayed up to make sure he was okay. He had been mentally composing an apology for his tardiness for the last several blocks.

When he pushed the door open, however, it was his mother who was sitting up. She had a newspaper open and was peering at it through reading glasses. His father was asleep on the secondhand couch they'd purchased, snoring faintly under a blanket.

Kaoru touched her finger to her lips, indicating that he should be quiet. She neatly folded the newspaper up, set it on a table beside her chair, and put her reading glasses down on top of the paper. Kenshin did stir as she rose, but didn't open his eyes.

She crept out of the room, let the door click shut after her, and shooed him down the hall. "How late did you stay at the office?"

"About nine." He yawned, mostly for show. "I couldn't concentrate. It took forever to get everything done."

"You work too hard." She scolded him in a low voice.

"Stuff needed to be done. The Lady Fair should be back Monday morning." He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, then realized that probably made him look like a sleepy little boy, and stopped. "I expected you'd be in bed."

She waved at her face with her good hand, indicating her blackened eye and bruises. "I've had worse from practice matches with beginners. And the arm doesn't really hurt all that much." She paused, then said, "Itches." Another moment of hesitation passed, then she added, "Your father finally wound down and fell asleep an hour ago. Be good to him, Yukio. He's taking this personally."

"I'm always good," he protested.

"Sometimes, too good." She looked up at him. "You've been here six weeks, and all you do is work. Haven't you met any other boys your age?"

"Morton's son." He hadn't been impressed by that meeting. Morton had challenged him to a game of dice, and then whined when he'd won and refused to pay the nickel they'd wagered. "He's ... young."

"He's your age."

"Doesn't act it."

"You act like an old man, sometimes." She shoved him towards his bedroom with the palm of her good hand, planted between his shoulder blades. Apparently, she wasn't even going to question why he was getting home at midnight if he'd left the office at nine. He suspected she was preoccupied by other things. "Not that this is permission to get into trouble, or anything, but compared to Yahiko or even Kenji, you scare me. Haven't you ever gotten a stupid idea and then acted on it? Other than things involving you and girls, I mean."

She was teasing him. Relief flooded him, because if his mother was joking, it couldn't be as bad as it seemed.

"Hey," he shot back, "It could be worse. It could be boys."

She smacked him with a low laugh, a playful swat between his shoulder. "This is true. Go to bed, Yukio."

--------------

"Dad, can I buy a camera?" He asked over breakfast the next morning.

Kenshin glanced up from a bowl of rice and fish. He didn't ask "what for" though it was an odd request -- Yukio had never wanted anything like that before. Instead, he said, "It's your salary."

One third of his wages from the shipping office went towards the household fund and savings account, for paying their expenses. Most of the rest went into his personal savings; he thought by the time he found a wife, he would have plenty accumulated up towards buying a home of his own. But he kept ten percent out for personal expenses -- fun stuff. He hadn't been spending much of that, except to buy the occasional lunch out, bag of candy, or dime novel, and therefore he had a roll of dollar bills upstairs in his room.

"Thanks." He hesitated. He'd thought about keeping this secret, but had learned long ago that Kenshin -- while not psychic -- was remarkably perceptive. "I'm going to take pictures of the cops. Doing bad things."

Kenshin simply said, "Do you think that's a good idea?"

He paused, since this response was not in the mental script he'd composed in his head about how this conversation would go. He'd expected his father to try to talk him out of it, or outright forbid it.

"I ... I have to do something. And last night, they were beating a women. Bad. And she hadn't done anything except be poor and living on the streets." He had not intended to tell his father about this, but now he blurted the words out and then wondered why he had.

"And you intervened?" Kenshin said, calmly, as if he expected the answer was yes.

"I ... I threw bottles at them. They chased me and let her go. It was dark and I don't think they saw my face." He had assumed he would be yelled at -- Kenshin rarely shouted at him, but this felt like something that might provoke his father into at least a vigorous lecture.

"That was intelligent."

Startled, he simply stared. There wasn't a trace of sarcasm in Kenshin's response -- his words were honestly meant. He basked in the glow of Kenshin's praise, grinning a bit. "Umm, thanks. But -- I could tell everyone about it, and nobody's going to believe me except those of us who don't count. I want to take _pictures. _They're hurting people. Pictures _matter _more."

"If you're behind a camera, you're not stopping the trouble yourself." Kenshin's voice held a bit of challenge.

"But if I mail the photographs to the newspapers, maybe somebody will do something about those two. And put them out of business forever. And -- and maybe if they see me with a camera, they'll stop." He heard a strident, defiant note in his voice, and shut his mouth. It wouldn't help his cause to raise his voice at his father.

Kenshin nodded, and said nothing.

"Dad, do _you _think it's a good idea?" he asked. It scared him, to be so openly confrontational with authority.

"I think you'd best wear a mask and run very swiftly after you take the photograph," Kenshin replied, amusement tugging the corners of his mouth up into the first smile that Yukio had seen on his face since yesterday. He took a bite of his rice. "And be careful with the flash powder if you're taking pictures at night. It's dangerous to work with. I saw a man lose most of his hand once, in Japan."

"But do you think it's a good idea?"

Kenshin said, "Hai. I do." He was quiet for a long, quiet moment. "Don't let them catch you."

Yukio stared at his father.

Kenshin lifted an eyebrow at him. "It's a good idea, Yukio."

"But -- but I could get hurt. Or caught by the authorities."

"Are you so afraid of being injured, or jailed on falsified charges, that you will not act?"

"... falsified charges?" Yukio hadn't considered that.

"It's not illegal to take photographs," Kenshin pointed out, "but likely, if they catch you, they will accuse you of other things which are against the law. Also, they may beat you, even to the point of death. Is this a risk you're willing to take for this cause?"

"Aren't you ... aren't you going to try to stop me?"

Kenshin looked sharply away from his son. "I would like to. But I won't."

"Why not?" Yukio said, both curious and feeling a little out of sorts -- almost defiant. Had he actually _wanted _an argument? He was weirdly disappointed that he wasn't getting one.

"Because what you are doing is right. I have raised you to do the right thing, always, even if it is difficult or dangerous, have I not?" Kenshin said, gently.

"Oh."

"To prevent you from acting now would be to go against my own beliefs." Kenshin paused for a long moment. "Please do not tell your mother that I condone this, however."

Yukio laughed. And he was still grinning, hours later, when he visited a small camera store with his money in hand, on the way to work.

-----------------

Kenshin sighed and stared at the letter he was writing. He couldn't decide if the sentence he had just created was grammatically correct, or not. _I will never be completely fluent in English_, he thought, with a bit of despair. He'd gotten -- well, not _criticism_, exactly, but comments from both American buyers and the office staff about his routine mangling of the language. And try as he might, he just couldn't seem to master its finer points.

_I think that's the wrong verb tense_, he decided, and changed, "will" to "would" in the letter. _The Pacific Trading Company would buys a thousand units at fifteen dollars each ..._

Something was still wrong with that sentence. He couldn't figure out what it was, but it didn't _sound _right. After a moment, he grabbed a new sheet of paper and wrote, _The Pacific Trading Company will buys a thousand units at fifteen dollars each ..._

He was still pretty sure that wasn't correct, but he couldn't figure out where the error was. And he didn't want to ask Yukio or Morton for help with one sentence.

_Why did I ever agree to do this? _Sometimes, he fantasized about walking away from this job and finding himself something more suitable to his skills and education level. Like digging ditches. Digging ditches sounded all sorts of appealing if he never had to conjugate another English verb.

"Hello, Himura-san!" Hayato's cheerful voice made him look up. The man stood in the open doorway of his office.

"Good morning, Hayato-san." Kenshin capped his fountain pen. He was glad for a break. Maybe the translations would come easier later.

"Got a second?" Hayato stepped into Kenshin's office and pushed the door shut behind him.

"Yeah, sure. What's up?" Kenshin rose. His office had a rumbling, hissing steam-powered radiator by the window, and he'd propped a tea pot full of coffee on top of it to keep the it warm. The fact that he needed to have the radiator on at eight AM on a July morning still left him disgruntled -- the locals had been complaining the weather was unusually cold, but, still, it felt _wrong_. "Would you like a cup?"

"Oh, thank you." Hayato accepted a mug from Kenshin, but waved away the offer of cream and sugar. "I am amazed to see you looking uninjured, after ..."

"Not here." Kenshin said, firmly. The door was closed, but he couldn't risk the danger of someone eavesdropping even by accident.

"How is Kaoru?"

"She'll heal." Kenshin sipped his coffee. He didn't say anything about how furious he was, both at the men and at himself. Waking to find that she had been injured in his absence -- even if that absence was caused by being unconscious -- had been a painful reminder of some of the darkest days in his life. Very easily, she could have been killed or brutalized. And it would have been his fault, for failing to protect her -- for misjudging a situation.

Again he wondered if he'd made the right decision in bringing her here. In London, at the family estate, she would have been sheltered and protected.

_And miserable, without me. _

"Himura-san," Hayato said, after sipping his own coffee. "There's a man asking questions about you."

Kenshin's eyes widened in concern, perhaps a little exaggerated for comic effect. It amused him to play the fool for Hayato, because Hayato knew the truth. "That is never good news."

"Heh. He's a blacksmith and a trader in antiquities -- he's very knowledgeable about swords. I have bought a few items from Japan that he obtained for me. And he is fluent in our language. So we do know each other. However, I thought it was a bit unusual when he started asking questions about you out of the blue over beers last night."

"What's his name?"

"Connor ..."

"... Macleod." Kenshin finished. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but only barely. "Thank you for mentioning this to me."

"I didn't tell him anything," Hayato said, firmly. "I said if he had any questions about you, he should ask you directly. I figured you could decide what to tell him about your secret, you know."

"Was he asking about that?"

"He asked me how long I'd known you. I thought he might be suspicious of your age. Perhaps he's seen old photographs ..."

Kenshin shook his head. "Connor's harmless. Also, he may know swords, but he's not very good with them. Likely, he thought talking to you was a discreet way of finding out what I'm up to."

_Except that even for as fluent as he is in Japanese, Hayato will always see him as an outsider. Hayato may be polite and friendly towards him, but Hayato's a diplomat -- he's polite to everyone. This doesn't mean that Hayato will ever trust him. _

"Why would he be interested in you?" Hayato sounded concerned, despite Kenshin's reassurance.

Kenshin decided he didn't have the right to give Connor's own secrets away, so he hedged, "We've got some mutual friends. Likely, all that is motivating him is rampant curiosity and perhaps a little concern for me. I'm afraid I was a bit rude to him last night and he may have concluded something was wrong."

"Well, something was."

"Aa. This is true. I'll talk to him later. Do you know where he works?"

Hayato gave him directions, then added, "Be careful. He's a very perceptive man. He could easily figure your secret out."

"Thanks for the warning," Kenshin said, smiling faintly. "But I'm not worried about Connor."

-------------------

Connor banked the coal in his oven and shut the door. It was late, and time to go home -- he had put in a full day's work crafting ornamental iron handles for a cabinet maker.

He was locking up when a buzz rolled across his awareness. He looked up and saw Kenshin half a block away, stepping out of a streetcar. A taller boy, with a very similar ponytail to Kenshin's, followed him. They had a striking similarity in appearance, despite the difference in height. Hideo had told Connor that Kenshin had adopted children from his own village and he guessed that this was one of Kenshin's children.

Nobody knew why, but even though Immortals were found as children, not born, they tended to resemble the people from their home. Yukio was much taller than Kenshin, and less scrawny, and Kenshin had fairer skin (and the beginnings of red roots in his hair), but they truly looked related.

He was, however, a bit surprised that Kenshin was bringing his child along for a visit with another Immortal. But then again, he was hardly a threat to a kid. And by the way the boy was moving, he had some martial arts training -- perhaps Kenshin figured his son could take care of himself. It would be interesting to see what the kid could do with a sword.

"Good morning, Mr. MacLeod," Kenshin said, stepping into the shop. As he moved, his left shoulder was a trace lower than his right, and his back was stiff. Connor decided he was armed -- which was fine, Connor had a whole arsenal of swords hanging on the wall of his shop.

"It is that," he agreed. "I see you're in a better mood."

"I apologize for my earlier rudeness." Kenshin bowed; Connor instinctively bowed back. "My wife had just been beaten by the police."

"Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't know. Is she okay?"

"She will be." Kenshin sighed. He glanced at Connor's weaponry, boldly hung up for display, but didn't say a word about it. "Hayato says that you were snooping around asking questions about me."

"I ..." Connor's eyes widened in dismay. He'd taken the old man out for drinks, and had thought he was being subtle. "I didn't think I was being that obvious."

Kenshin snorted. His eyes were sparkling with evident amusement. "Has Hayato ever told you what he did during the Bakumatsu?"

"... No. I know he was on the side of the royalists, in Kyoto." Little warning bells rang in Connor's head.

"Espionage, mostly." Kenshin grinned. Connor blinked. That mischievous expression completely transformed Kenshin's face, and made him look genuinely likeable. "He was a good swordsman, but not a brilliant one. Where he excelled was at interpreting intelligence and rumors. He had a thousand sources and contacts and friends in high -- and odd -- places. A lot of the missions I went on were due to information he dug up."

"You knew each other." Connor felt like beating his head against the wall. Then his eyes narrowed. "Does he know ..."

Kenshin lifted an eyebrow.

"Of course he does." Connor sighed. "I take it you're telling me that he doesn't miss much?"

"No." Kenshin smiled.

"I am sorry, Kenshin. I just ... well, I was both worried about you, and watching my own back."

"Forgiven." Kenshin grinned. "For this, anyway. I confess I'd probably do the same thing."

Connor let out a slow breath. For reasons he couldn't explain, he'd liked Kenshin from their first meeting. He was relieved to see that Kenshin was smiling at him. "So. Is this your son?"

The boy, who had been standing politely -- and quietly -- behind Kenshin, spoke up, in clear and fluent English. "Yes. My name is Yukio, sir."

"Well, Yukio, how do you like San Francisco?"

"I have an excellent opportunity to work for my sister-in-law."

"Hmm. But what do you think of the city?"

"I am still making up my mind, sir." Yukio's accent was distinctly upper-class British, from the London area. Connor was surprised to hear this, and wondered what the boy's story was. Hideo had only told him that Kenshin had moved to England and then on to America, and Hayato had been frustratingly vague.

"Yukio, will you go home and tell your mother I'll be back late? I want to discuss a few matters with MacLeod." Kenshin clearly understood at least a little English, though he spoke in Japanese.

Yukio glanced between them, looking concerned.

"Don't worry," Connor said, "I promise I won't take his head."

"I am not concerned in that regard," Yukio said, with a laugh, and then added, "With all due respect, Mr. MacLeod, sir, my father would win."

The bad thing was, Yukio was probably right. Connor had crystal clear memories of suddenly finding a sword at his throat -- before he had registered any movement from Kenshin.

Kenshin said, in a sharp tone of reproof, again in Japanese, "Yukio, that's not very nice."

"But it is the truth!" Yukio grinned, waved, and headed up the street.

Connor laughed, as the boy left and Kenshin glowered after him. Despite Connor's amusement, Kenshin tried to apologize. "I'm sorry for my son's words. He sometimes forgets his manners."

Connor liked kids -- particularly cheeky, intelligent ones who could hold their own among adults. He waved off Kenshin's apology. "Don't be. C'mon, Ken, I'll buy you that drink I promised."

"Huh?"

"A long time ago, I said I'd buy you a drink. Let's go. I'm getting a bit thirsty, anyway."

"Oh." Kenshin ran a hand over his hair. He seemed bemused. "Okay."

----------------

Connor took Kenshin to a bar that was very much a dive; it was, however, owned by a man who wasn't likely to object to Kenshin's not-white-ness. They claimed a table at the back, and Connor noted Kenshin positioned himself so he could see the door. Connor had been in enough fights in his life to do the same. They ended up sitting elbow to elbow, which wasn't a bad thing for a private conversation in a relatively public place.

Kenshin sipped his beer and said little at first, beyond social pleasantries -- polite discussion of the alcohol they were drinking, the weather, and a bit about Kenshin's job, which seemed to be translating Japanese manifests, letters, and documents into English and English into Japanese. Given that there weren't more than a few hundred Japanese in all the city, and fewer who could read and write in English, Connor suspected Kenshin was quite a valuable employee.

Finally, Kenshin came to the point and asked in Japanese, "Why are you curious about me?"

Connor snorted and replied in the same language. "Because you're five feet tall, you refuse to take heads, you didn't even want to believe me when I told you what you are, and yet, you're still alive forty years after I saw you last. That alone piques my interest."

This earned him a laugh. Kenshin had only downed half a bottle of beer, but it was apparently enough to loosen him up a bit. "I may refuse to kill, but I'm far from helpless. However, I had a few very close calls before I came to believe what you were telling me."

"Haven't you ever had anyone come after you that wouldn't _stop_ until he was dead, or you were?"

Kenshin stared into his beer for a moment. His amusement vanished. "Yes."

"What happened?"

"They're dead."

"So you do kill." Connor was pleased by this; there were certain Immortals that just needed to lose their heads. Having Kenshin on the side of the light would mean that many fewer bad guys.

"In one case, a mortal policeman killed him. In another, my student killed him." Kenshin's voice was very soft. Connor realized he regretted those deaths, and had not been the killer. "Part of my reason in speaking to you, Connor, is that I am looking for that student."

Connor was vaguely disappointed that Kenshin felt he needed a _reason _to speak to him. On the other hand, he had definitely not gotten off on the right foot with the little Immortal.

Kenshin continued, "She was very much like a daughter to me. I do not know if she is alive or dead now and I am hoping you may have seen her. She committed a crime in England and was hung for it; after, I sent her to America. She lived here in San Francisco, for a bit, before moving elsewhere. We haven't heard from her since and it's been twelve years." Kenshin hesitated for a long moment, and then said, "This was the last place she lived. When Jessica wanted to send us here to work for her, I agreed primarily because I hoped to find her. She was like a daughter to me."

"What's her name?" Conner asked, sympathetically. He could hear real pain in Kenshin's voice -- quiet, understated, and not something the man would often speak of, but genuine soul-deep grief nonetheless. He hurt for his student to the very core of his soul.

"Chiyoko, officially. She may or may not be using the name of Anna Myojin. The travel papers we had prepared for her had that surname on them as, obviously, she was executed and could no longer use her own name -- a friend in Tokyo will verify she is his daughter if anyone investigates it and asks."

For a prickly sonofabitch, Connor thought, Kenshin sure had a lot of friends.

He continued, "She's shorter than I am, and looks very young -- depending on how she is dressing and presenting herself, she may appear to be anything from a very young girl to late teens. She was fourteen when she died, and looked younger."

"Ouch." Connor shook his head. It was always hardest for the younger Immortals. "No, I haven't seen anyone like that here. I've been in the city five years."

"In her only letter to us, she said that she'd met a man, but she didn't give me his name. Another Immortal. I'm hoping she is traveling with him."

"She'd be an easy target if she's as small and young-appearing as you say." Connor was honestly surprised that Kenshin himself hadn't had to deal with opportunistic head hunters. Or maybe he had; if he had soundly beaten a few men but left them living, it wouldn't be something they would brag about.

"Not so easy to kill," Kenshin grinned, briefly. "Her size gives her both serious handicaps and significant advantages. She lacks power but she is faster and more agile with a blade than anyone I've ever known."

"Coming from you, that's quite a claim."

"Believe it. I taught her. Also, I regret to say she _will _kill if provoked."

"Hmm." Connor vaguely remembered Duncan saying something about taking a student who had become a good friend, but proved to not really be in need of a sensei. He'd said she was very short and very fast and already very well trained -- mostly, he had taught her to live in the West. She had been Japanese, he recalled, because Duncan had commented about getting a chance to practice that language a bit.

As far as Connor knew, Duncan and his student had parted ways on good terms a few years ago. He had seen his clansman the year before, and he had made a few passing references to her, including buying her a baby doll for a gag Christmas gift. Apparently, hassling his student about her appearance was something Duncan found uproariously funny.

He suspected that Duncan's friend was Kenshin's student. However, he didn't want to get Kenshin's hopes up too much. Cautiously, he said, "I have a kinsman from the same clan I was raised by. He has mentioned a good friend of his who meets Chiyoko's description."

Kenshin's eyes narrowed with concern.

Connor held a hand up. He was a bit amused by the play of emotions across Kenshin's face; he was certain that if Kenshin wanted to, he could put on a poker face to match the best of them. He wasn't even trying, however, and for now Kenshin was very easy to read. He said reassuringly, "Don't worry. He wouldn't have pushed himself on your kid unless she wanted it -- and was old enough to be a legitimate lover. Duncan likes his women grown up and sophisticated. But he's also one of the good guys, and he tends to attract make very loyal friends among other Immortals."

"Chiyoko has made unwise choices with men, and friends, before." Kenshin said, though he sounded hopeful.

_If she's smart, _Connor thought, _she'll find a large man to travel with. Even if she's good with a sword her age and size will attract trouble. Sooner or later, someone might get lucky. If she has a big, mean, jealous boyfriend, it will discourage most of the more casual head hunters. _

However, he couldn't voice that opinion to Kenshin. He didn't have the heart. "I'll send him a letter. I believe he's in Oregon at the moment. He's got a girlfriend there."

Kenshin nodded. "I thank you. And I must offer you an apology, by the way."

"For the problems yesterday morning? You're forgiven."

Kenshin shook his head, making his pony-tail bounce. Apparently, that was not what he was referring to. "For believing you a madman, so long ago. You're a good man, Connor. I wasn't ready to believe what you had to tell me, then. You meant only to help me."

Connor grinned, amused by this. "You thought me crazy?"

"Truly." Kenshin gave him a sideways look, judging his reaction. "I very nearly told the authorities about you, reported you as a dangerous madman. And I continued to think you insane until it became evident that I wasn't aging. Then I was killed, and came back. And I had to believe what you told me was true."

At that instant, the buzz of another Immortal rolled across both their awarenesses. Kenshin looked up sharply in reaction, and Connor said mildly, "You know, if you do that, you reveal you're the Immortal they're sensing. It's not exactly a pinpoint accurate sensation. If you avoid visibly alerting the other Immortal to your identity it will take them a little while to pick you out of the crowd. That gives you an advantage."

Kenshin flushed. Connor internally gloated at having scored on him; clearly, that was not something that the man had ever considered. But then Kenshin said, "I've never had difficulty identifying other Immortals even at great distance in crowds."

"Yeah, well, that's because you're weird." Connor retorted.

Then he wondered if he should be teasing Kenshin. The man clearly had a well-developed sense of humor, but they didn't know each other very well. However, Kenshin grinned in response. "That's what all my friends say. Were you expecting someone?"

"I wasn't, but this bar is popular with us. When Immortals aren't killing other Immortals, we like to talk. It's a good place to do it, because the owner doesn't care who comes in here. Immortals represent all races and all walks of life." Connor sipped his beer.

A moment later, a tall man stepped through the door. Connor scowled. This was not one of the people he especially liked talking to, and not someone Connor considered a friend. Andrew had taken a few too many heads, in his estimation, and wasn't exactly sane.

"Ken-san, this is Andrew Thomas." Connor introduced them when the man came over. "Andrew, this is Ken Shin. I'm not sure how much English he speaks ..." Then he realized that Kenshin had to speak a fair amount if he was doing translation work.

"I speak a little, and I apologize in advance for how badly I do." Kenshin said, in perfectly clear -- if heavily accented -- English. "I live in Britain thirteen years."

Half that distinctive accent was English. Connor found he was amused by this. Nobody would ever mistake Kenshin for an American, at least, not after he opened his mouth.

"Never seen you around before." Andrew pulled up a chair without being invited and straddled it backwards. "You must be pretty young."

"I am older than I look." Kenshin took a small sip from his beer. Connor made a mental note not to offer Kenshin another one now that Andrew was around -- at his size, he likely didn't have much tolerance.

"He's not an easy mark, Andrew," Connor said, with a bit of warning in his voice. He didn't know either man very well, but had seen enough of Andrew to be suspicious and mistrustful of him. His last girlfriend had been Immortal, and had turned up minus her head on the waterfront. Suspicion was on Andrew -- they had been seen fighting in public the day before she'd died.

Kenshin, by contrast, had the deep respect of both Darius and Hideo. Darius was emphatically a man of peace; Hideo, if not exactly unwilling to lop off an enemy's head, was at least deeply honorable. Connor took that as an indication of Kenshin's character.

"Friend of yours, hmm?" Andrew said, in a curious tone of voice. Connor translated that to, _Under your protection, yes? _

"I'd like to think we could be friends." Connor took a long, measured sip of his beer. "He put a sword to my throat in a fight about forty years ago, and didn't kill me. That counts for something."

Andrew grinned, suddenly, "Oh, yeah, I heard that you got beat by somebody from Duncan."

"Shorty here has apparently told every Immortal he's ever met about getting the drop on me. Darius told Duncan." Connor laughed easily. "I thought I'd take Kenshin as a student after I demonstrated his immortality to him. He had other ideas."

Kenshin smiled brightly, but said nothing. Connor wondered what he was thinking. Did he resent the term _Shorty_?

Andrew, however, made his opinion a lot more clear. He frowned at Connor. "You really must have been off your game that day."

Connor had been in Japan shortly after the Meiji restoration. He'd heard the stories about the Hitokiri Battousai -- and mos of them were certainly nonsense. However, many of the stories agreed that Kenshin had killed dozens of men, some of them protected by the best bodyguards found anywhere in the world. Given that history, and given his brief glimpse of Kenshin's skill, he had a pretty good idea what this master of Battoujitsu could do against the average Immortal.

Connor was good with a blade. Really, really good -- good enough to have survived four centuries. He was not, however, in Kenshin's league. And he knew it, and Kenshin knew it, and if Andrew was smart enough to read between the lines, he ought to be able to figure that out too.

Andrew looked from Kenshin -- who appeared remarkably innocent and harmless, and perhaps a little simple, when he smiled like that -- and then back to Connor. Connor suspected his own expression was more along the lines of, "I've-got-a-secret." He just couldn't do _village idiot _as well as Kenshin did.

Andrew finally barked a laugh. "If the shrimp here can beat you, maybe I ought to challenge you, Connor."

"You're not better than Kenshin." That was the only warning Connor figured he owed the man. Andrew could interpret what he wanted to from it. It had been awhile since he'd taken anyone's head, but that didn't mean he was out of practice.

"Yeah?" Andrew's reaction was positively belligerent. "Who says?"

"I not wish to prove MacLeod-san correct. Neither of us wish to challenge you." Kenshin's words were mild. Connor heard veiled threat in them, but wondered if Andrew was smart enough to understand that "I don't wish to fight" did _not _mean, "I'm afraid of losing."

"Heh. I bet you avoid fighting." Andrew rose suddenly. "Why do I get the feeling that neither of you are feeling friendly?"

Kenshin said brightly, "I'm always friendly. Are you, sir?"

Andrew muttered something about _moron _under his breath as he departed.

As soon as he was out of sight, the innocent, somewhat goofy smile disappeared from Kenshin's face. In a very serious voice, he said, "MacLeod-san, that man will be trouble."

"I know, I know. He's just asking to lose his head."

Kenshin replied, with a return to that bright, cheery, expression, "I do not have to kill him to convince him I'm the better swordsman. He is asking for a very thorough beating, that he is."

Connor glanced at Kenshin. The man's words had been phrased in very formal, very humble Japanese. However, deep amusement sparkled in his light-colored eyes. Kenshin added, "This one would enjoy demonstrating to Mr. Andrew Thomas that he is a better swordsman than MacLeod-san, that is the truth, that it is."

Connor burst out laughing. Mostly, it was Kenshin's voice tone -- cheerful, chipper, utterly innocent of any guile. "I only hope I get to witness it."

Kenshin stared after Andrew as he shoved his way out the door, as several other people were trying to enter. "Connor, that man is not entirely evil. Something is eating at him, and he is lashing out at everyone, and perhaps looking for a fight that will end his pain."

"Feh. He's just nuts. Half of us are. Makes me value friendship with the sane ones among us even more."

"I'm not so sure that he is irredeemably mad." Kenshin drained what was left of his beer. "I thank you for the drink. I should be getting home, however. I want to check on Kaoru, and I have some work to do yet tonight -- I'm surprising Kaoru and my son with an automobile. I've been fixing the stable behind my home up as a garage for it."

Connor grinned. "Really?"

Kenshin nodded. "She mistrusts horses, and I worry about her riding the streetcars alone on errands."

"You'll have to take me for a ride when you get it."

"Certainly." Kenshin's smile was bright this time, and genuine. "I will see you later, MacLeod-san."

"Sure, sure. Hey, come by on Saturday nights. There's several of us Immortals who meet here. We play poker and dice. It's a good group."

An expression that Connor couldn't begin to read flashed across Kenshin's face. Kenshin said simply, "I may take you up on that offer. It's been a very long time since I've had anyone to play cards with."

Belatedly, after he'd left, Connor remembered Darius mentioning that Kenshin was very, very good at chess and _go_. And suddenly, he was very much looking forward to adding Kenshin to the mix of his friends. Kenshin, playing poker, sounded like a great deal of fun.

-------------------

Kenshin reached the house a few hours after dark. Kaoru was seated on the front steps, under the porch light, with her face turned up. Tear tracks glistened in the harsh electric light.

"Kaoru?" He hurried up the street to her. "Kaoru, what's wrong?"

The only thing he could think of was that something had happened to Yukio. His heart was in his throat because her expression was terribly bleak. The last time he had seen that expression on her face had been fourteen years ago, and it had been Sanosuke they had mourned.

Then he saw she was clutching a piece of paper in her hands. She stared up at him, wordless, eyes huge and blue and brimming with tears. Her face was puffy -- Kaoru couldn't cry without looking a mess, and she'd obviously been sobbing for awhile.

"What?" he demanded, "Kaoru, what happened?"

_Who died_? he thought. He whispered, "Is it Yahiko?"

She shook her head. And said in a voice softer than his, "Tsubame."

"Tsubame ..." Kenshin sucked in a startled breath. He'd just seen Tsubame a few months ago. She had been healthy, with no signs of any sort of illness. He had simply not seen this coming.

Kaoru shoved the paper at him, then wrapped her good arm around her knees and buried her face in the crook of her arm. Kenshin read it by the porch light's glow -- it was a telegram from Japan, from Megumi, telling in short, terse words that Tsubame had died of a heart attack the on Friday. She had collapsed on the way to the market, and had been gone in moments.

He felt tears prickle at his own eyes. He liked Tsubame -- it was hard not to, really. She was quiet and polite, and he knew Yahiko had loved her with all his heart. Her innate grace had always balanced Yahiko's

"Yahiko's all alone." Kaoru rocked back and forth. "Yahiko's all _alone_. I thought she'd be there to take care of him."

Kaoru would mourn Tsubame. Her grief, however, was for Yahiko. He knew that, and felt a bit of it himself.

"He has six daughters." Kenshin knelt beside her, and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. He buried his face in her hair and said reassuringly, "They will look after him, Kaoru."

"Oh, Tsubame ..."

He hugged her. There wasn't anything else he could do but hold her.

He did not cry himself and he was not even sure why. It hurt; he grieved for Tsubame, and her children, and for Yahiko who had been married to her for nearly as long as Kenshin had been married to Kaoru. He couldn't imagine losing Kaoru, suddenly and without warning.

_All alone_.

"He has his daughters," he repeated, finally. "He has Megumi. He has Tae. He is _not _alone."

"He's dying." Kaoru whispered into his shoulders. "He's dying, and now he's alone."

-------------------


	80. Chapter 80

Author's Notes:

As I've mentioned before, I am following the TV series universe for Highlander to a large extent, through season five. However, in my personal universe. Duncan never kills Richie by mistake, and The Final Dimension and The Source movies never happen.

I am assuming that Connor's early history is more-or-less the same, though obviously, the movieverse just conflicts with large chunks of the the TV Highlander universe. But in my personal spin on it, Connor was born in the 1500's, and as in the movieverse, his sensei was a Japanese Immortal named Nakano who, conveniently, is also who he learned the language from. However, Nakano was killed before he could teach Connor all his secrets. Nakano's cave hasn't been discovered in my personal 'verse.

I am amusing myself by contemplating Kenshin's reaction to the bad guy from Highlander 3.

-----------------

Kaoru packed.

Kenshin sat on a chair in their bedroom, hands between his knees, head bowed, glancing up occasionally to watch her through his bangs.

A week's time had faded the bruises on her face, and her broken wrist did not seem to be impeding her much -- she was using both hands to fold a kimono. Carefully, she wrappd

Her steamer trunk was full of an assortment of clothing. There were kimonos that were forty years old and one newer one, purchased in Japan just a few scant months ago. All her western clothing was tucked into it, as well, tightly folded -- skirts, dresses, and a few dungarees and men's shirts she'd purchased recently because Kaoru would be Kaoru and would be a tomboy to the day she died.

The yellowing marks around her eye made letting her go easier. They were a visible reminder that she wasn't safe here, and perhaps it would be better that she return to Japan.

Of course, he was terrified about her departure. There were so many hazards, so many dangers from man, and nature, ranging from illness to pirates, that could strike. He would be unable to protect her if anything happened. But Kaoru was tough as nails and demonstrably could take care of herself, and he trusted Shura to captain the Lady Fair safely across the Pacific to Japan. The ship was departing tomorrow, and Kaoru would be on it.

He didn't know when she was returning. On a personal level, that left him shaken and lonely. And this acute pain was familiar; a lesser twin to that time long ago when he had thought she had been killed.

But he thought her decision was the correct one. Yahiko was alone. He had his daughters, and his friends, but they had family of their own and small children and would not be able to focus on caring for him. He was ill, and growing old, and Kaoru loved him as a brother.

Kaoru had raised six other children. She had been a mother and grandmother. She'd run dojos, been _sensei _to hundreds of students. And Yahiko had been the first child she had taken under her wing, decades ago, when he had been an orphaned street rat in trouble with the Yakuza. To her, Yahiko was somewhere between "brother" and "son" ... and he was alone, and dying.

Kenshin had not been surprised by her choice to go home to him. Just as Kaoru had crossed most of Japan to chase after Kenshin, she would go to Yahiko now. She loved him as the closest of family and he needed her. She would have done the same for any of her other children. It was just the way Kaoru was.

Kenshin couldn't follow, of course.

He had pulled off his disguise for a short period of a few weeks, but long term? No. Sooner or later, someone would recognize him, and remember, and there would be trouble.

They hadn't really discussed this subject. She had, simply stated "I'm going home."

He had replied, "I know."

And that had been it.

Yukio was in his room right now. When they had told him Kaoru would be leaving, and might not be back for a long time, he had not cried, nor complained, nor protested. Kenshin had then asked him, "Do you want to go with your mother, or stay with me?"

"I have a job to do here." His words had been soft.

"Jessica would understand if you want to leave," Kenshin had told him, quietly. "Your mother could probably use a helper."

"I ... if you want me to go away, I will, Father." Yukio had stared at his feet while saying this.

"That wasn't what I meant."

"But how can I chose between you?" He'd met Kenshin's eyes, then. Kenshin had been unsurprised to see a flash of anger on his face. "You made me chose once, between you and mom and everyone else Now you ask me to do it again!"

"Stay." Kaoru had made the decision for him. Her words were firm. "Your father needs you more than I do. If he doesn't have someone to take care of, he'll go crazy. Or I'll come home to find he's found a whole new Kenshin-gumi while I was gone."

Kenshin could have argued that point -- but the last thing Yukio had needed to see was a fight between his parents. And Kaoru had neatly solved Yukio's dilemma by choosing for him. Kenshin had not intended to upset him so badly.

Now, Yukio was sitting alone in his room. When Kenshin had looked in on him earlier, he had been motionless, his gaze a thousand miles away.

And Kaoru was packing. He didn't know how long she would be gone. Months. Years. He watched. Just being there as she put her things in trunks was the hardest thing he'd ever done. It felt like he had failed her. Weirdly, it also seemed like a betrayal -- deep down, he wanted to be hurt.

She picked an enameled box up off the dresser and opened it. He knew she kept her hair ribbons in that little chest, and was unsurprised when she pulled one out. However, she unrolled this ribbon and held it up. He saw it was stained and faded, a tattered bit of old silk. He was surprised that she had one so old and worn in her collection of pretties.

"Do you remember this?" She ran it through her fingers. "I used to sleep with it."

He shook his head, puzzled.

"I was so angry when you bled on it. It was my favorite. I couldn't get the stains out. I tried and tried."

"Oh. You kept it?" He remembered, before he fought Jin-E, she'd given him a ribbon and made him promise to bring it back. She had been justifiably afraid that he would lose himself to the darkness and walk away from her, never to return. It seemed as if that night, when they had both fought Jin-E, had been a lifetime ago. They had both won. And in the process, he had acquired a whole new level of respect for the Kaoru and her stubborn, fierce courage.

Her lips twisted up into a sad, wistful smile. There was no ferocity in her expression now. "You stayed. It was worth losing my favorite hair ribbon. You _stayed_." Kaoru caught his hand and pressed the bit of silk into his palm. "You came back to me. And I will return to you. That's still my favorite ribbon."

------------------

The house without Kaoru was too quiet. Kenshin stood in the quiet, empty parlor. He had carried the phonograph down from the upstairs study and set it a chair.

He ran a hand over the little machine that he had purchased for Kaoru. He wished he had thought to tell her to take it home with her; Yahiko likely would have enjoyed listening to it.

Perhaps he would have Shura drop it off on her next trip to Japan. The Lady Fair would be back in San Francisco at the end of summer. However, when he thought about it, he recalled that the ship was supposed to be return in early September, but then they had an itinerary planned for her that involved a complex series of stops in Hawai'i, San Diego, San Francisco, Alaska, Hawai'i again, San Diego again, and only then a return to Japan. That would be in the spring.

Marshall Shipping had other ships with regular ports of call in both the Orient and the west -- maybe he could put the phonograph on one of them. They'd just sent the North Wind off to Japan by way of Russia -- it would be back in eight weeks, then a direct shot back to Japan with a shipment of ore.

He finally lifted the lid and put a recording of a waltz on. The turntable spun and creaky, scratchy music -- but music nonetheless -- issued forth.

He closed his eyes, listening. It seemed like a miracle that one could listen to music whenever one wanted; recorded music was one of his favorite examples of modern science.

After a moment, he shrugged out of his shirt and moved into the first steps of a kata, one he could match to the triple beat of the music. The parlor's wooden floor and high, arched ceiling were perfect for training. It was dark in the room, as he had not bothered to turn on the electric fixtures -- it was good practice to work without light.

He let himself fall into the familiar rhythms of a kata he'd practiced since he was a small child, modified slightly for the slow, steady rhythm of the music. Muscle memory guided him through it; he did not even need to consciously remember the steps and motions. His mind wandered. He should have been meditating as he worked, but meditation was something Kenshin had never been particularly skilled at -- or, frankly, interested in.

Instead, memories surfaced. Memories of her. They were the memories of a lifetime.

She had been so young, so alive, so fierce when they had first met. That curious mixture of innocence, goodness, and stubborn opinionated pride had drawn him to her, then. He had been intrigued by her, and by what she represented. She was the embodiment of the future that he had wanted to create with his sword.

Kaoru, laughing. Kaoru, looking at him with wide blue eyes. Kaoru, yelling at Yahiko -- and Yahiko calling her _busu _even though Kaoru was beautiful. A twenty-something Kaoru, walking to the market with a very young Kenji riding piggyback. Kaoru, grandmother, standing in a window with Rebecca, the youngest of Kenji's children, cradled in her arms. Kaoru with her long hair unbraided and hanging down to frame her face as she straddled him with her hands on his shoulders ...

Suddenly, a brilliant flash startled him so badly he nearly fell over.

Kenshin whirled around, then lunged for the doorway, and snapped on the electric lights.

Yukio, grinning, stood in the midst of a cloud of acrid smoke. He had a box camera in one hand with the shutter bulb clenched in his teeth, and a flash gun in his other hand.

"Himura Yukio!" Kenshin said, annoyed on many multiple levels, "What did I tell you about flash powder? You _will _be careful with that or I will take it away from you."

"Awwwww ..."

"_Never _set that thing off in the house. Do you want to burn the city down around our ears?" Kenshin grabbed the flash gun out of Yukio's hand. House fires were a real risk -- they were as dangerous here in San Francisco as they were in Tokyo, and just as prone to spreading to take out numbers of buildings. He snapped, "There's a bucket of paint and some paint brushes in the stable. Go. You can have this back when you've painted the doors."

"Daaaaaaaad ..."

"_Go_."

After Yukio had stalked out the back door, in the general direction of the stable, Kenshin allowed himself to smile. While he was serious about the punishment, he had deliberately chosen the chore because it was one that would send an unsuspecting Yukio to the little barn behind the house. He set the flash gun down safely in a nonflammable metal bucket in the kitchen then followed Yukio.

Kenshin had been shopping this morning. He smiled behind Yukio's back as his irritation faded.

Shoulders hunched resentfully, jaw set with anger, his son had reached the stable. He yanked open the door that he was supposed to paint, snapped on the lights that Kenshin had recently installed, and then stopped short.

Kenshin's grin broadened.

"A Ford!" Yukio spun around and did a silly sort of dance in place. "Father, you bought an automobile!"

"Paint the door." Kenshin clapped a hand on Yukio's shoulder. "We'll drive it to work in the morning."

"But ... but ... I thought you said you didn't want to stand out!"

Kenshin shrugged. He'd expressed his reasons for buying the car to MacLeod. He gave his son a simpler reason. "Lots of people are buying automobiles. We are not poor, and there is nothing wrong with purchasing a practical vehicle such as this. It will be less costly and easier to maintain than a horse and cart."

Of course, some people would talk. However, when Kaoru returned, he would have the Ford waiting for her. And he didn't mention to his son that buying the automobile was one small defiance against the status quo.

"Can I drive it? Will you teach me?"

Kenshin wasn't the slightest bit surprised by that question. He had been expecting it. At fifteen, he knew _he _would have been eager to drive a car, had they existed then. "As long as you behave responsibly, yes."

Yukio started to dance in place again.

"That includes no flash powder in the house, Yukio. I believe you have a door to paint."

"Yes, Father." Suitably chastened, Yukio picked up the bucket of paint and a brush and got to work.

---------------

Laughter.

Kenshin sipped his beer and listened to the banter between the other Immortals. There were three of them: Connor, a large black man who answered to Tiny, and a skinny, very tall three-century-old Immortal who was named Clancy. Clancy had the palest blond hair Kenshin had ever seen.

Clancy tossed his hand down on the deck again. "I fold. Kenshin's smiling."

Tiny gave Kenshin a suspicious look. Kenshin blinked innocently. Tiny grumbled, "Yeah."

Tiny's cards -- and Connor's -- hit the table. Connor said, with a scowl at Kenshin, "I figured you could hide your thoughts better than that, Shorty."

"Maybe I can." Kenshin spread his hand out to reveal that he had a three of clubs, two fours, an eight of clubs, and a jack of diamonds.

"Auughhhh!" Clancy slapped the table. "You are evil, man. You were completely bluffing." He flipped his cards over to reveal three of a kind, of eights.

Kenshin reached out and scraped the pile of coins off the table. "Of course. Is not to bluff part of game? And it is late and I go to the office early tomorrow. We have a ship arriving. I thank you for game."

"You're just quitting while you're ahead," Connor teased him.

"That, too." Kenshin said, with a bright-eyed smile.

----------------

Outside, Kenshin rubbed his jaw -- Connor and his friends had a talent for making him laugh. He had grinned so much his face hurt. Still smiling, he walked to his automobile, which was parked on the street in front of the bar.

Yesterday, he'd gotten a telegram from Kaoru saying she had arrived safely in Japan after twenty-three days at sea. The ship had been delayed a little by bad weather, and he had been worried when the telegram had been late. His relief to get a message from her had left him in a very good mood. Connor had needed to do very little coaxing to convince him to join the others for their Saturday night card game.

He planted one foot on the bumper of the Model T and yanked the crank around. The vehicle made a gridning noise and didn't start. He swore softly, and tried again. It took two more attempts before it rumbled to life.

He lit the lantern hanging off the hood with a match, and then climbed up into the driver's seat. The car sputtered a couple of times and then, with a pleasant growl, responded to his touch on the pedals and wheels.

And three blocks away, it coughed and died.

He climbed out, and as he did, he smelled the sharp stench of gasoline. Kenshin swore softly, and knelt to look at the tank.

By the glow of a nearby streetlight, he could see that was a hole in the gas line, and fuel was leaking out steadily. Kenshin straightened up, and slid a hand under his coat to rest on the hilt of his sword. That puncture had not gotten there on its own.

He had moment's warning: the clatter of hooves, and then the buzz of another Immortal's presence. Kenshin unhooked his sword and sheath from the shoulder harness and calmly hung it off his belt, then stepped back into an alley.

He wasn't surprised when Andrew Thomas charged around the corner. Kenshin sighed. "You didn't have to damage my automobile."

Andrew nimbly dismounted, and sent the horse off with a swat. It ran off, presumably in the direction of its stall. As he turned back towards Kenshin, Kenshin caught the buzz of a second Immortal, approaching -- he hoped the one-on-one rule would apply here, and that this was not a buddy of Andrew's. Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu was designed for one-against-many fighting, but that didn't mean Kenshin wanted to tackle two opponents at the same time if he could help it.

He ignored the second Immortal for a moment; they were at least a hundred feet away.

Andrew said, scornfully, "Would you have fought me if I didn't?"

"I not want to fight today." Kenshin said, truthfully.

"Just draw your sword, man."

_Idiot_. "No." The other Immortal had paused, and Kenshin thought he was at the end of the alley, watching the fight. Perhaps it was one of his new friends from the bar. If so, he suspected they were about to get a demonstration of his skills.

"No? What are you going to do, fight me with the scabbard?" Andrew's voice was mocking.

Kenshin wondered if he knew _anything _about swordsmanship -- did he not recognized the most basic battoujitsu stance? He sighed and made a summoning gesture by curling his fingers towards him. "If you want to fight me, do so now."

"So draw your sword!"

"No."

Andrew made a disgusted noise and charged him, sword held high in the air.

Kenshin realized he was completely clueless and that this fight was going to be laughably easy. He shifted his grip on his sword from a battojitsu stance to something a lot more basic. No sense in showing off his skills if he didn't have to.

Instead of drawing his blade, Kenshin neatly stepped aside and, as he did so, he swung his sheathed sakabatou forward. Andrew tripped over it and went sprawling with a splat in a noxious puddle.

The other Immortal scrambled back to his feet, astonishment on his face. He snagged his sword up and cocked it back over his shoulder.

"That's a grip for a baseball bat, not a sword," Kenshin noted.

Andrew's face twisted in rage and he ran at Kenshin again with a whooped battle cry.

He didn't even need to try very hard to step aside for a second time. Kenshin grabbed Andrew's own sword at the hilt, ripped it out of his hand, spun completely around, and smacked the other Immortal in the back of the head with the flat of it. Then, with grave courtesy, while Andrew was still reeling, he offered it back, holding the weapon in both hands. "You already lose, Andrew-san. If I want you dead, you die. I not want you dead. Life is precious."

Andrew snatched his sword out of Kenshin's grip -- and took another swing at the smaller Immortal. Kenshin had been expecting this.

He smashed the weapon to the ground with his sheathed sakabatou. Andrew grabbed for it, bending over, and Kenshin kicked Andrew in the head with a booted foot. Andrew went sprawling again. He tried to scramble back to his feet and Kenshin planted a foot between his shoulder blades.

"Kill me."

"No." Kenshin hung his still-sheathed sword back on his belt before letting the other man up. "Go home, Andrew."

"But you're supposed to kill me!" Andrew scrambled backwards on his knees, then landed on his rump.

"Why?" Kenshin offered him a hand up. "I do not hate you."

"But I tried to kill you!"

Kenshin patiently stood there, hand extended, waiting for Andrew to take it. After a moment, Andrew hesitantly reached out and Kenshin pulled him to his feet. He then bent over and picked Andrew's sword up, and gave it back to him. "Are you swing at me again?"

He was willing to beat Andrew into the dirt a few more times if necessary, but hoped he wouldn't have to. Despite his joking words to MacLeod, he saw grief and pain and terrible loss in the boy's soul. This wasn't an attempt by Andrew to take Kenshin's head; it was a try at suicide.

"N-no."

"Good." Kenshin sheathed his blade. "I believe you help me with my automobile now."

"Huh?"

"Help me with my car. Push it." Kenshin made shoving gestures with his hands. "I steer."

"Oh!" Andrew stared at Kenshin. "Y-you want my help?"

"If you would be so kind."

As they turned back towards the car, he saw the other Immortal he had sensed: Connor. Connor shook his head as they walked past and said, "Andrew, I would have taken your head."

_If he really wanted to die, _Kenshin thought, but did not say, _it would have been you he picked the fight with. _Instead of voicing this, however, he said, "This one will never kill again. Andrew push my car to a safe place, help me fix it, we're good. No killing."

------------------

Yukio, grinning, took the steps up to the back door two at a time. It was very late -- and he'd just gotten a great shot of the two cops beating up an old woman. Better, they'd spent the last half hour chasing him and the girl had certainly gotten away.

The kitchen light was still on -- he was surprised, not having expected his father to stay up for him. However, when he entered, he found his father at the table with a stranger.

The man was tall, with a shock of blond hair that was badly in need of a comb. He had his hands folded around a cup of coffee. Kenshin looked up as Yukio entered, then said, "Andrew-san, this my son Himura Yukio. Yukio, this is Andrew Thomas."

"Hi." Yukio set his camera down on the counter.

He was surprised to be introduced as Kenshin's _son_. The mystery was quickly resolved, however, when Kenshin explained, "He's Immortal, Yukio."

In Japanese, Yukio asked, "Is he trouble?"

"Speak English in front of our guest, please." Kenshin's rebuke was mild. "Yukio, Andrew look for a sensei to teach him swordsmanship."

Andrew cleared his throat. "I had hoped you would teach me yourself ..."

Yukio snorted a laugh. "My dad doesn't teach anyone Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu. But my mom's run a dojo for my entire life. I've been instructing people since I was seven or eight years old."

Andrew's look was dubious, at best. "You would have your son train me?"

Kenshin said dryly, "Yukio will not be so nice if you try hurt him."

"He tried to hurt you?" Yukio turned a scowl on Andrew. "Father ..."

"That is how I meet half my friend. They try to hurt me, I convince them better we be friends. Include your mother." Kenshin said, with a real smile. "If I am superstitious, I say good omen if they try hurt me on first meeting."

------------------

Connor took a long, measured swig of very good brandy.

Kenshin's moves flashed through his memory: he had stepped aside, grabbed the hilt of Andrew's sword, and spun completely around to smack the man in the side of the head with his own blade. Teasingly, he had told Andrew that, _You've already lost_.

Connor had seen that technique before -- and heard those words as well. A long, long time ago, he had learned that trick from the same man who had taught him to make swords and to speak Japanese.

_Nakano_, he thought, with fondness. _Oh, Nakano. _

Suddenly, Kenshin's near-supernatural abilities made a whole hell of a lot more sense to Connor. And Connor's curiosity about the little Japanese Immortal had been rewarded, in spades. He downed the rest of his glass and poured another. Getting drunk seemed a logical reaction.

-----------------


	81. Chapter 81

Yukio didn't dare send the photographs he'd taken to Kodak to be developed. Fortunately, developing the film himself turned out to be fairly simple -- the photo shop had sold him bags of chemicals, reels to roll the film onto for development, an enlarger to make prints with, and sheets of photographic paper.

Developing the film was a bit like cooking, he decided. The hardest part was getting the film on a reel. It took large amounts of manual dexterity, and had to be done in pitch dark. After that, it was all about processing the film for approximately the right amount of time, at exactly the right temperature. He spent all of a Sunday in the house's basement. Close to dusk, he emerged with finished prints.

Kenshin was reading a letter in the kitchen when Yukio walked in. He set a still-dripping print on the table: Kenshin was in mid-kata in the parlor, poised on one leg with his arms and sword extended out before him. The flash had cast a long, dark shadow across the wall behind him, and Kenshin's eyes were glowing white from the reflection.

Kenshin made a face. "Yukio, that makes me look like a demon."

"I think it's great." Yukio claimed his print back, stung a little by his father's reaction. "I've got some negatives in the fixer bath right now that are of our bad cops doing bad things. I hope they turn out as well as this print. There are two that should be good."

"What are you going to do after you print them?"

"Mail them to a newspaper." Yukio lifted one shoulder up in half a shrug.

"Speaking of mail, this came for you." Kenshin picked a letter up off the table and handed it to him.

"It's from Melody!" He had sent her a letter a month before, telling about the purchase of the house and his job. He had not received a response, however, until now.

----------------

Yukio's bedroom had a window seat. He sat crosslegged in the window, and read the letter by the light of the setting sun.

_Dear Yukio,_

_I hope this letter finds you well. I was happy to hear about the house your mother and cousin purchased. It sounds lovely. It is also good to hear that you are doing well with your job. _

_I must apologize for taking this long to respond to you. My father became ill as soon as we arrived and is still not well. He thinks it is the heat -- it's always hot here, even at night. We have a small house out in the country. He has hired two employees and we are planting orange trees and a section of cotton. _

_We have two nearby neighbors, if you can call half a mile and a mile away "close." One farm is owned by a man with a twenty year old son and he has been courting me. My father likes him, and I suppose he's okay, though I never thought I'd marry a farmer. I can't imagine being tied down in one place for the rest of my life. My father says I should say yes to him, but I'm not sure. I don't think I'll find a better prospect out here, but he's just not what I want. _

_Besides being a farmer, he just won't talk to me. He tells me about his plans for his future and about his horse and his sisters and the other girls he likes. But it's a one-sided conversation. He interrupts me when I try to tell a story, he doesn't want to hear me say anything, and if he does listen, he always finds something negative to say about what I'm telling him. For example, I tried to tell him about how beautiful France in the spring was, and he said he hated Frenchmen and changed the subject to how much work it is to pick oranges and dates._

_I will say it is a hard life here. It is always hot. Always, even at night. And terrible thunderstorms roll in, with dust and high winds. They say it cools off in October, and that seems so very far away. I wish I could visit you for awhile, just to get out of the heat. Most men here send their families to the northern part of the state for the summer, but we arrived in June and we don't know anyone. I cannot go alone to the high country, and so, I remain here. My father will not go with me. _

_There are canals for irrigation. Sometimes we swim in them, but the water's the temperature of bathwater and the mosquitoes are terrible. _

_And with the heat, my father is so tired all the time. He says his joints hurt and he gets terribly dizzy and feverish. He's lost a lot of weight and I think he's seriously ill. I've tried to get him to go to see another doctor, perhaps a specialist, but he won't go. He says there's nothing another doctor could do to help him, but he won't tell me what's wrong._

_He has been finding plenty of patients, though half of them can't pay except in barter. One man paid my father with a live pig! And another gave him six bottles of mulberry wine. It was terrible tasting and we gave it to the pig. I think he would have wealthier clients if we lived in a city, but he likes the peace and quiet out here. However, I worry about being able to afford the payments on our farm. The orchards will not be producing for many years. _

_My father bought a nice buggy and a fine horse. I like the horse. Her name is Stormy, because she's a dark grey, like the underbelly of a thunderstorm. She's fast and reliable, perfect to get him to a patient in a hurry. I think she's a lot of fun to ride. It's five miles to town and I go once a week to shop -- my father lets me go by myself. Sometimes, Nathan goes with me; he says it's not safe for a woman alone. He doesn't listen to me when I say I've lived in far more dangerous lands than rural Arizona._

_Yukio, I hope you write me back soon. I am sorry it took this long for me to respond to you. I almost didn't, because I know there is nothing for us but letters, but I miss you. Tell me what you are doing -- is your mother getting her dojo running? Your cousin, is he still as funny as ever? I want to hear from you. I've decided if letters are all I can have, letters it will be. _

_With affection,_

_Melody._

Her signature was graceful, looping, with a flourish for the tail of the "Y." Yukio read the letter carefully, three times, then sighed.

_Nathan. _

He resented this man he had never met, who was courting her. He had never hated his ancestry so much before. It simply wasn't fair. Had he been born of European ancestry there would be no question about him courting Melody.

"You must not hate yourself." His father's voice came from his doorway. "You may legitimately be angry at the people who treat you unfairly."

"How did ..." he'd said nothing of his thoughts. He had not even known his father was observing him.

"I'm very good at guessing what goes on in your head, Yukio," Kenshin noted, with a wry, gentle smile.

"I miss her." He sat down on his bed. "I wish I could be someone else, Father."

Kenshin sat down next to him. "I've wished that, too, sometimes. I have often desired to be a person I am not."

"Really?"

Kenshin blew out a sharp puff of breath that made his bangs bounce. "Quite often." He leaned back, resting his weight on the palms of his hand. "I wish I wasn't Immortal."

"Oh. I guess."

"If I wasn't Immortal you would have been raised in Japan. You would not be hurting like this, today." Kenshin reached a hand out and squeezed his son's shoulder. "So I know this pain. I know what it is, to wish you were different. But neither of us can change who we are."

"I want to fight them." Yukio met his father's gaze. "I want to _fight_. It's not _fair_, Father."

"You would attract attention to us." Kenshin looked away. "Is that really the wisest thing to do?"

_Attract attention to the family and it might expose my father's secret. Which would put all of us in danger -- not just me and Father. _Yukio swallowed hard. "I ... you're right. I can't. And it's not fair to Melody." It hurt, with a soul deep pain that was nearly physical in its intensity, to admit his father was right.

Kenshin's arm settled around his shoulder in a one-handed hug. He said nothing.

"She wants me to write her back."

"What do you think you should do?" Kenshin said.

"It would hurt her, if I don't respond." He tucked his knees to his chest. Kenshin promptly removed his arm from Yukio's shoulders, caught one leg by the ankle, and swept his booted feet off the bed and onto the floor.

"Father," Yukio said, after a moment, "I want to keep writing her. But I don't know if ... well, every letter I get will remind me of what I can't have."

"Yes. This is true."

"But she wants me to write her. She wants letters from me." And it was painful to think of her so very alone, with nobody to talk to. He suspected it would hurt her a great deal if he didn't respond.

"Yes. What do you think you should do?" Kenshin repeated his question.

"I don't know."

His father's voice was very soft. It sounded like a confession when he said, "I can't tell you what you should do, Yukio. I can only tell you that I trust you to make wise decisions in this matter."

"What would you do?" Yukio asked, curiously.

His father was quiet for so long that he though Kenshin hadn't heard him. Then Kenshin said quietly, "I had many, many reasons to never express my feelings for your mother. And in the end, I married her."

Kenshin rose, then. "Your path in life is not an easy one, Yukio. I trust you to make the decisions you believe are best. Like all of us, some of those decisions will ultimately prove to be wrong. What matters is that you keep trying, and that your decisions are made with the interests of your friends and family kept in mind, as well as your own."

"In other words, life's hard. Don't be selfish."

"Hai." Kenshin grinned. "And you have a most remarkable ability to condense my lectures down to a few short words."

"That's because you never use one word, if you can find three that will do." Yukio shot back. But he laughed as he said it. "I guess I'll write her back, and tell her that it will be my last letter to her. And that I care about her."

His father nodded. "That sounds like a kind and responsible thing to do."

--------------

Yukio crept with minimal noise along the rooftop, booted feet finding cautious purchase on the shake shingles. Below him, his quarry were interrogating the owner of the house.

He mapped an escape route out in his head: over the crest of the roof, down a drain to a fence, and along the top of the fence to the alley behind the house. The alley was a dead end in one direction and the exit was too close to the policemen's current position. However, if he jumped the garden wall of one of the houses behind him, he could go through their front gate and cut across a broad boulevard to a business district.

There, he planned to climb up to the rooftop of a warehouse. The warehouse had a loose skylight. He would hide among the bales of wool that were inside until he was sure that the police had given up the chase.

He crouched down in the shadow of a dormer and waited. He could hear the police talking, but not make out their words. It didn't matter. He'd heard them enough to know they assumed the worst in everyone, and, when frustrated or angered, became violent. They needed to feel powerful.

The owner of the little house was a man who sounded elderly. In the dark, Yukio couldn't tell what race the man was, but this neighborhood was largely Italian.

"I tell you, I don't know!" The man's voice had a thick accent. Yukio's guess at _Italian _was right.

He lay down and wormed on his belly to the edge of the roof, camera in one hand and the flash gun in the other. He would open the shutter with the bulb clenched in his teeth, then fire the flash gun. And then run.

"I don't know!" the man repeated, angrily. "I haven't seen her!"

There was a thud, and the man cried out. "Hey! I haven't done anything wrong!"

"Where's the girl?"

"I haven't seen her in days! She's not living here anymore, I'm not responsible for anything she's done!"

Yukio saw a violent movement. He bit down on the shutter bulb, and fired the flash gun. There was a brilliant flare of light -- he got a brief glimpse of an old, stooped man with his arms raised defensively, and the cop with a baton swinging towards his head.

Nearly blinded by the brilliant magnesium powder, he fumbled his way over the roof and found his way to the drain. The cops were shouting obscenities behind him -- he heard a crash, and realized they'd forced their way into the man's house. They'd guessed he was going to try to escape via the back yard.

He hesitated, then changed directions. The house was two stories high, but built on a steep slope. The uphill side of the house was really only a story and a half to the ground. Still barely able to see, he jumped. He'd learned to take a high fall from his father -- he hit the ground rolling, scraped his shoulder on the ground, conked his temple on a rock, and scrambled back to his feet. Camera still safely held in one hand, flash gun dangling from his other wrist by a strap, he bolted.

"Suckers!" He darted into another alley, vaulted a fence, and made his escape.

-------------------

By the middle of August, Yukio had a stack of a dozen photographs. Seven of them were of the pair of bad cops, and the rest were taken during a riot in China Town; he'd gotten pictures of assorted cops beating residents in broad daylight.

One of the victims had been an older woman who reminded him a great deal of his mother. He'd found her later and convinced her to let him take a photograph of her injuries -- blackened eyes, a split lip -- and had included a note that said she had simply been bring groceries home from the market when she'd been caught up in the trouble. That photograph was the first one, on the top of the stack, that he had mailed.

"I sent the photos," he told his father, after finding him up to his elbows in soapy water in the kitchen sink. Kenshin was standing on a box and scrubbing plates. "To the San Francisco Tattler."

Kenshin nodded. "They are quite compelling. What are your plans now?"

"Umm. I don't know. I guess I see what happens."

----------------

_Dear Melody, _

Yukio hesitated. His wastebasket, beside the window seat in his bedroom, was full up to the top with crumpled wads of stationary. He'd paid quite a bit of money for some very nice paper and a good pen, and most of it was sitting in the trash. It was somewhat distressing.

He adjusted the clip board in his lap and then continued, after dipping his pen in the ink:

_I hope this letter finds you well and that your father is feeling better._

_My mother has returned to Japan as a friend of the family is ill, and his wife has died. She will return when he is better, or not. We do not know how long she will be away._

He paused, staring out the window. Across the street, the lady who had called the authorities on his father was standing on the stoop, yelling for her son. It was late, the sun had set, and apparently her boy had not come home. Yukio wondered how she would punish him -- he'd seen her spanking the child, the week before.

After a moment, he returned to the letter.

_It is just me and my cousin here, for the moment. I will be returning to school in about two weeks. Morton, the manager for Marshall Shipping's office here, is looking for a replacement for me as I will then only be able to work in the afternoons. I will go to school from seven in the morning to one in the afternoon and work from one thirty until five. Morton is having difficulty finding anyone bilingual with Japanese, however, to take my position. It is why my sister-in-law sent us here in the first place._

_Melody, I have responsibilities here, and your father obviously needs you if he is sick. Even if he is well, it strikes me that you are his only family. While I think that you are beautiful and I truly loved simply being with you, there is no future for us. It hurts me to tell you this, but I do not wish to continue writing you. Every letter will remind me of what I cannot have. I am sorry. I will always think of you fondly._

_With a great deal of affection,_

_Himura Yukio._

He wondered if that was too sappy -- or even if he was doing the right thing. She would be very upset and hurt when she read the letter. But it was the truth. He would rather not be reminded of her, and every letter would be salt in his wounds. Surely, she would feel the same way.

He folded the letter, rose, and retrieved an envelope and stamp out of the box beside his bed. Kenshin was in the garden out front, pulling weeds. Yukio left the letter in the mailbox for tomorrow, and then turned to his father. "Need some help?"

"I'm almost done here. Did you write the letter to Melody?"

He didn't ask how his father had known. Kenshin had likely read the truth on his face. "Yeah. I told her I can't keep writing her. It hurts too much."

"And you think that was the best decision?"

"I don't know." He wanted to run to the mailbox and rip that letter into shreds. "Do you think it was?"

Kenshin said quietly, "It's not a decision I can make for you, Yukio. When we first came here, I was worried that you would not understand how hostile people can be to us. Now, I believe you know this truth. You are very responsible and you will make the choices you believe are best."

"She's all alone." He hesitated. "Father, she's all _alone_. Her father is ill. It sounds as if she has no one to talk to, no one to trust."

"Aaa. This is true. Is it better to be completely alone, with no friends, or is it better to have a friend and wish for more?"

Yukio looked away from his father while he processed that question.

Kenshin said slowly, "I have been in both positions. For me, being completely alone was worse. But her situation, and yours, is different. It is very possible that she will find friends, and a husband, without your involvement in her life."

"Maybe." Yukio glanced at the mailbox.

"It would not hurt to think on your response to her for a few days longer."

"What do you _want _me to do?"

"I don't know." His father's response was candid, and unexpected. He had hoped for wise advice. Kenshin stood up; his back popped audibly as he did, and he winced a bit. "I'm going to fishing down on the dock. Want to come?"

"No, I'm supposed to meet with Andrew for a session in half an hour." Andrew was, of all improbable things, a grocer. He closed his store at seven and could usually make it to the house for lessons by seven-thirty.

"How's he coming along?" Kenshin asked.

Yukio shrugged. The tall, broad man was a mess -- awkward, clumsy, and full of bad habits. "He's hopeless."

"Well, he'd better find hope, or he's going to lose his head." Kenshin dusted the dirt off his hands and picked up a bucket of weeds. "Don't worry about the fine points. Teach him survival skills, for now."

"Do you really think he killed his girlfriend?" That had been bothering Yukio, that the rest of the Immortal community in San Francisco was putting the blame on the man.

Kenshin shrugged. "I don't know. If you're curious, ask him."

"'Gee, Andrew, did you off your girlfriend ...?' -- What do I do if he says _yes_?"

Kenshin's expression was serene. "Ask him how it happened."

"Father ..."

"Something has him so twisted up inside that he deliberately picked a fight with me in hopes I would kill him." Kenshin's pale eyes were level and calm. "But he also wants to live. If he truly wanted to commit suicide, it would have been Connor he Challenged, not me. I question what is causing that conflict. It is very possible the reason for this has to do with the girl who died. But we do not know the whole story, that we do not. And I will not pass judgment on him until I know everything."

The calm remained in Kenshin's expression, but he looked sad. He continued, "This one has killed many people, Yukio. The things people say of Andrew, could be said of this one."

After a moment, Yukio retrieved the letter from the envelope and went inside to wait for Andrew's arrival. He could send it tomorrow, he supposed, after thinking about it a bit. One more day wouldn't hurt -- he'd been waiting weeks.

-------------------

Yukio watched Andrew as he awkwardly and self-consciously moved through a very basic kata. "You need to put more weight on your left leg."

The Immortal glanced over at him and Yukio demonstrated. His mother had taught him this kata when he had been very small. He honestly didn't remember a time when swordsmanship had not been part of his life. Yukio wondered what it would be like to start learning at thirty years of age -- with a body not well suited for the tasks asked of it, and with one's life at stake.

"How long have you been Immortal?" Yukio asked, conversationally, as he swept his arms around in a graceful circle.

"F-five years." Andrew mimicked Yukio's movements, but Yukio could tell he was simply copying things, and not actually _feeling _the work. "So you've always known your f-father was one of us?"

"Since I was old enough to keep the secret," Yukio said, then added, "You need to keep your elbows tucked in."

"H-how old was that?"

"Eight or nine. Several years ago."

Andrew paused. "Y-yukio, how old are are you?"

"Fifteen. I'll be sixteen in a few more weeks."

"I d-didn't realize you were so young! You look older than your dad!"

"Don't tell my father that, he's supposed to be twenty on his paperwork." Yukio laughed. He walked to a bench along the wall and said, "Do that kata again. I think you've about got it. Just remember your balance. You need to keep your center of gravity underneath you. You're always overextending yourself, and someone will dump you on your ass someday."

"Someone will take my _head _someday, if I don't master this."

"You've survived five years."

"Yeah." Andrew abruptly stopped the kata. "I guess I have."

He sounded unhappy. "Yukio, I ..."

At that moment, someone knocked on the door. Yukio gave Andrew an apologetic look and said, "That's odd."

"Expecting anyone?"

"No ..." Yukio padded through the house to the front door. He wasn't sure who to expect at eight PM on a Saturday night, but Melody wasn't even an option he'd considered.

It was raining outside, and she was soaked through. Her blond hair was plastered to her scalp, straggling loose down her shoulders. Her skirts were dripping and she was visibly shivering.

"... Melody?" he said, dumbfounded.

"Can I come in?"

He held the door wide open. She was freezing. "What are you _doing _here?"

And she promptly burst into tears.

----------------------


	82. Chapter 82

"Will you locate my cous... father?" Yukio said, in a low voice, as he descended the stairs and found Andrew still in the parlor. He had given the shivering, soaking wet Melody towels and some of his clothes and told her to warm up in a hot shower.

Andrew nodded. "Who is she?"

"A friend."

"Pretty."

"Yeah." Yukio agreed, not sure he liked the way that Andrew said _pretty_. If words could leer, Andrew just had. "My father said he was going fishing, but it's raining now. You will most likely find him in the bar down by the docks where all you Immortals meet."

"I'll check." Andrew glanced up the stairs. They could hear water gurgling through the house's pipes. "What's her story?"

"She is a friend of ours. She is not aware of my father's secret, so she believes he's my cousin. Why she's here, I don't know -- I told her to get warmed up and then we'd talk."

"Think I should stick around and help?"

"_No_." Yukio was surprised by the fiercely protective flare of emotion that he felt. "If you wish to help, please find my father."

"Okay, okay." Andrew held his hands up. Yukio had not managed to keep his voice level or polite. "I'll go track him down!"

After he left, Yukio put a pot of hot water on to boil for coffee -- he had discovered on the ship that Melody had a preference for the bitter drink over tea. He had told her to come downstairs when she was ready. He wished he had someone female to call -- crying girls was not something he had much experience with. However, he didn't think that May or Grace were good choices -- too reserved -- and that left very few other options. He was alone in dealing with Melody, and whatever had made her so distraught, until his father got there.

_Father's good with crying girls. I hope Andrew finds him soon._

It took her half an hour to appear; likely, the basement boiler had run out of hot water before she left the shower. When she did, she was no longer shivering. She was now dressed in a pair of his old dungarees, and wearing a shirt that was loose-fitting on him but which stretched tight across her breasts. He had underestimated how attractive a freshly showered girl wearing trousers was, and, after a long stare, blushed hard and stammered, "D-do you feel better?"

She hunched her shoulders in a curious fashion -- he never remembered seeing her look defeated before --and replied, "Y-yeah."

"I brewed you some coffee. And there's cream and milk and sugar and honey ..."

"Honey in coffee?" She said, with a ghost of a smile.

"S-sorry. I don't drink it. Guess you don't drink honey in coffee ... I think it's all nasty. My father taught me to make it, though, as I am usually the first one awake in the morning. He likes it. I make breakfast and he makes dinner. We usually take tea at the office except on Sundays."

They stared at each other for a moment. He realized he had been babbling.

"Did you get my letter?" Her words were shy.

"I was going to mail a response tomorrow." Which was half the truth; he could have mailed it, or he might have changed it or it was possible that he would have procrastinate more. Well, that was all moot now. He was going to need to tell her _no _to her face. And he didn't know if he could. And that inability to form words of denial to her had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he could see the pea-sized points of her nipples through the thin white fabric of his shirt.

He felt his cheeks turn warm at that realization, and forced himself to focus on her face. He was glad that Andrew was gone. "W-would you like a sweater or something?"

"I wouldn't have gotten it." She shook her head, and it took him a moment to realize that she was talking about _letters _and not _sweaters._ "I'm never going back there again."

"What -- hold that thought." He rose and went to the coat closet by the front door and found her a warm wool sweater. It _was _cool in the house, and he could see goosebumps on her arms. Her skin and hair were still damp.

She shrugged into his sweater with a grateful smile. "T-thank you, Yukio."

He stood uncertainly in the living room, shifting his weight from foot to foot. She glanced at him, and seemed to see him for the first time. "Funny clothes."

He glanced down at his gi. "I was giving a lesson to a student. We have one. It's for working out."

"Just one student?"

"Yeah. My mom's back in Japan; a friend of hers is sick. So he's my student." He wondered if he should go change. He was so used to wearing them around the house that he hadn't even thought about what it might look like to her.

However, before he could tell her he was going to put something else on, she let out a shaky, sobbing breath. "I'm ... Yukio, I didn't know where to _go_. I'm sorry if I'm intruding, but ... but ..."

And she started crying again. Great, gulping sobs. They seemed to come from the bottom of her soul, and she was shaking visibly. Hesitantly, he put a hand on her shoulder.

Melody started to do something -- rise, run, he wasn't sure. But she ended up stumbling to her feet and then collapsing to the floor. She was crying so hard she was gasping for breath. He knelt beside her, unsure what to do.

She somehow pushed herself into his arms. He held her, as her tears soaked through his shirt. He didn't know what to say, so he simply wrapped his arms around her.

A long, long while later she finally quieted. He said softly, "Would you like to go to bed? You can have my bed, and I'll sleep on the sofa in our study. We can sort this out in the morning."

This set off a whole new round of tears. Beneath them, however, there was scary bitter laughter. And then she started to talk. "N-nathan. Nathan said I c-could sleep." She exhaled raggedly, "N-nathan s-said I could s-sleep in a bed and he'd sleep. On the floor. He said. He said. He said this."

Yukio tried to lean back but she had ahold of him with a grip like iron. "D-don't go! D-don't! Please!"

"Shhhh." He reached up and smoothed her wet hair. "I'm not going anywhere."

"I ... he said he'd sleep on the floor!"

"What happened?" Though he had an awful feeling that he knew. And he was going to kill Nathan for her.

"M-my father's dead." She _didn't _cry when she said that. She leaned back and wiped her eyes, finally letting go of Yukio. "H-he had cancer. He told me, just before he died. He f-found out right after he bought the farm."

"I'm sorry." He was. He'd liked Dr. Timothy. And given what she'd told him of her family, this meant that Melody was entirely alone. She had aunts in New England, somewhere, but they had not wanted her as a child and had apparently never approved of her father.

"A-After the funeral. Nathan. Nathan said he'd give me a ride home to my house. T-they have an automobile. Instead h-he took me to his house. His father was there, and his mother! H-he put m-me up in the bunk house. I said I wasn't scared, but he said he wanted to stay with me. He promised he'd sleep on the floor. There wasn't anyone else there; they don't have any hands right now."

"He didn't sleep on the floor."

"No ... I was such a fool. I should have made him take me home."

"It's not your fault." He could have raped her just as easily at her own home, Yukio guessed. "Melody, look at me. It's _not your fault_."

She wouldn't look up at him. "I-I ran. Into their house. I begged his mother to help me. And she called me a-a-_whore_. She said I'd _asked _for it, by letting him take me home. And that if I was smart I'd marry him. That her son was the best man in the whole state." She rocked back and forth. "I-I think that she _knew _what he was going to do."

"Good God," he said, holding her close. "On the day of your father's funeral ..."

"It gets worse." She sobbed. "M-my f-father left the farm in a trust until I m-marry. Then m-my husband inherits! Nathan's father is the trustee. M-my father t-thought they'd take care of me, I think. They're o-our n-neighbors. M-my neighbors. I c-can't say 'our' anymore ... They sold him a great bill of goods! H-he told me u-unless I m-marry his son I c-can't s-stay there! H-he s-said he h-had to r-rent the house out to a tenant to run the f-farm!"

Anger filled him. Cold rage. "That's not right!"

He wondered why her father hadn't just left the farm in her name. His sister-in-law had certainly proven to him that women could successfully run a business. Or, presumably, a farm. _Chauvinistic bastard_, he thought, of her father.

"Then N-nathan, he-he tried again. I h-hit him in the head with a shovel. A shovel. A shovel. A shovel."

She rocked back and forth in his arms. "Dad -- dad left me a letter. He said he was worried the bank would call the loan if I inherited directly. They don't like women running things. They want a man running things. S-so he left it in a trust for me. B-but he never knew what Nathan was going to do. I know that. I _know _it. But he wanted me to marry him. He said that in the letter. He said I needed to find a husband to take care of me. And he's right! But I don't want it to be Nathan!"

"Shhh."

"I wouldn't! I -- I took the horse and ran away. And s-she _died_. In the heat. It was so, so, so hot. She colicked. I ... I got rides from people until I h-h-hopped a t-train. A hobo helped me! . I should have taken the train t-to b-begin with, but I didn't want Nathan to have the horse. I thought he'd abuse her. Instead, she died."

And she was crying again.

"Shh." He whispered. "You're safe now. I'll keep you safe. It's okay."

"I d-didn't know where to g-go. T-then I r-remembered your cousin s-said he _owed _us. Because we saved your life, and your mother's life. I-I-I ... so I decided to come to you."

"That's right. We do. We owe you a lot. I owe you my _life_."

"And ... and ... and I knew you wouldn't turn me away. I knew it. Please don't. Please don't turn me away."

He nodded. "You can stay here tonight. We'll figure out what we need to do tomorrow."

He untangled himself from her grasp and then offered her a hand up. "C'mon. You're exhausted. Like I said before, you can sleep in my bed tonight and I'll stay in the study. It's just down the hall so if you need anything, just shout, and I'll hear."

"O-okay."

"And the door locks. You'll be safe." He promised her.

"I ..." Her blue eyes met his. In a very soft tone of voice, almost inaudible, she whispered, "... I'm not afraid of you, Yukio. It's why I came here."

------------------

Kenshin came home late, and very slightly drunk. He was surprised to find Yukio still up -- and more surprised that Yukio was hanging a woman's dress up to dry from a line hung in the kitchen.

"Is there something going on I should know about?" Kenshin said, regarding the dress with interest. "That looks like it might fit you, if you padded the bust."

His son shot him a vicious glare. "It's nothing to joke about. Melody's upstairs. Didn't Andrew find you?"

"Andrew -- no. I've been at Nelly's Bar all night. I won ten bucks at poker. Then I drove Connor home. Maybe he came by after I left."

"Damn. I _told_ him to look there, several hours ago. Father, I told Melody she can stay here tonight ..." he gave his father a brief, but unabridged, version of what Melody had told him.

Kenshin was coldly furious, but he knew he couldn't lose his temper and go beat the crap out of a few men. This had to be handled properly. "She can't stay here. Tonight is fine, but tomorrow, we get her a place in a rooming house." He scratched his head. "She said she hit the boy in the head with a shovel. Did she kill him?"

"She didn't know. She knocked him out and ran. If he did die, serves him right. Dad, she doesn't want to stay in a hotel or a rooming house. She said that, just before she fell asleep. She trusts us."

Kenshin sighed. "I'll send a telegram to my solicitor. He should have some ideas about how we can handle this. And maybe how she can get control of her trust. Surely, her father didn't anticipate this. He was a good man."

-------------------

In the morning, Melody was calmer -- this was, Yukio guessed, at least partly his father's influence. Kenshin's confidence was contagious.

"First order of business is to get you a couple changes of clothing." Kenshin said, over coffee. "My son washed your dress, but I'm sure you're aware that it has seen better days."

She glanced down at her dress -- which was stained, and threadbare -- and then nodded. Kenshin's tone was businesslike. He added, "There's a market I have found of that has decent used clothing for sale. We'll stop there. Then a hair dresser. After you're looking a bit more respectable, we'll find you a good rooming house."

"I cannot afford anything." Her words were very soft. "Mr. Snell has control of my inheritance and he will not give me even one penny unless I marry his son. The only other way for me to obtain control of my father's money is to marry someone else."

"Oro! This is nothing, compared to the debt I owe you." Kenshin's eyes were wide and utterly guileless. "How can I put a dollar amount on Yukio's life, or Kaoru's?"

She nodded. "Thank you."

"... Next, I know a lawyer. I cannot imagine that what Mr. Snell is doing is legal. I have hopes that the courts will assign a new trustee to take care of your farm and your money until you find a husband."

Yukio had been making pancakes while his father talked. He set a plate down before her, along with a small glass bottle of syrup. "Here. You're probably starving ... you can get started while I make up breakfast for myself and Ken."

Melody took one look at the plate of food and then ran for the back door. Noisily, she dry heaved off the back porch. Yukio stared at the plate for a minute, then went after her, making concerned noises. Kenshin heard him asking if she'd eaten anything that might have been spoiled, did she want help inside, how long had she felt sick ...

Kenshin, in a wry tone of voice too low for Melody or his son to hear, said, "Well, that will certainly complicate the hunt for decent husband for her."

-----------------

Dressed in a nearly-new skirt and bodice, and brand new shoes and a coat, Melody looked much healthier. She stood in the center of the parlor, waiting for their opinions on her outfit.

Yukio assured her, "You look lovely."

Kenshin nodded. "Let's get something to eat, and then we'll find a hotel room for you."

"I-I d-don't want to stay in a hotel." She hunched her shoulders. "I _trust _you two. I... in a hotel, anyone could ..."

Kenshin hesitated. Her fears were real, and perhaps even justified. Yukio was looking at him, waiting for his reaction.

_This is no different than Kaoru taking me in, _Kenshin decided. He'd been far from respectable back then, and certainly, people had talked. However, Melody's respectability was so badly tarnished at the moment that staying with them surely couldn't make things worse. People would talk -- but she had to know this, and she did trust them. Perhaps staying with people she trusted was more important than any gossip she might have to endure.

In the end, he couldn't bear to make her cry.

"Very well. Yukio and I will share a room, and you may have his room."

"Th-thank you. I'll find work or something, to help you. I won't be a burden."

"It might look better if you tell people you're renting the room from us," Yukio suggested. "But you don't really have to pay."

"I c-can cook. Clean. For you. For other people. I'll work hard." She paused. "I'll pay. For a room. Too."

------------------

Andrew showed up two days later, in the evening. Yukio answered the door at his knock and was both relieved and pissed. "We were afraid you were dead," he said, without any preamble of a greeting.

"Dead?" Andrew said, in questioning tone. "Who would kill me?"

"Me," Yukio said, crossly. He held the door open. "I sent you to find my father and then you never made it to the bar."

"I thought you said he was going fishing." It was an evasion, and a cheap one at that. Yukio distinctly remembered that it had been raining out, and that he had specifically told Andrew to check the bar. Apparently, Yukio's skepticism was clearly written on his face, because Andrew vented an explosive sigh. "The truth? Kenshin wasn't the only Immortal there."

"And?"

"Connor threatened to have my head the last time I saw him."

"Connor is _not _going to take your head." Yukio planted both fists on his hips and regarded Andrew with annoyance. Both he and Kenshin had been scouring the papers for any news about a headless body or massive damage to a building that might indicate Andrew had been beheaded. "I've met Connor. He's a decent sort. If he threatened to off you, you probably did something to deserve it."

"Geeze, kid, you're mean."

"And enough with discussing the truth about my family."

"Huh?"

"We have a boarder. And I think she's coming down the stairs." He could hear footsteps in the upstairs hall.

"A boarder?"

"At any rate, I'm glad you're not dead," Yukio said. "And the boarder is Melody. She's staying with us for now."

"The girl?" Andrew's eyes lit up in a way that Yukio found he disliked immensely. "She's pretty."

"She also sixteen," Kenshin said, as he descended the stairs. It had been Kenshin that Yukio had heard and not Melody, to Yukio's relief. "You thirty. Please keep honorable towards her."

"Aw, she's old enough. Sixteen's plenty old. My mom was married at fourteen."

"It's not the age," Kenshin said, "so much as it's the man doing the courting."

"Hey!" Andrew said, "what's that supposed to mean?"

"You not impress me much. The girl, impress me a lot. I owe her. I feel fatherly towards her." Kenshin glanced at his son, then said to Andrew, "You want to court her? Become man I can approve of."

"Oh." Andrew blinked.

Kenshin pointed a finger at him, somewhat rudely. "You can be good man. Or not. Your choice. I will _hurt _you if you hurt her." Yukio's father glanced over his shoulder. "And she come down stairs in a moment ..."

"Yukio? Ken?" Melody's voice preceded her appearance as she descended. "What's going on?"

"Melody-dono," Kenshin said, "this is Andrew Thomas, Yukio's student."

"Hello, sir." She said. Her eyes were wary. She had met him when she had first arrived, but Yukio thought that she had been so upset that she might not even remember him. She was generally supicious around strange men, too. Yukio didn't blame her. He still hadn't figure out why she trusted _him _so much, but was eternally flattered that she did.

"Milady." Andrew swept her a bow straight out of a very bad play. "I am honored to meet you."

Melody seemed to be holding her breath. Finally, she said, "And I'm quite certain you say similar things to every woman you meet. -- Ken, I am going to start dinner. Is Mr. Thomas staying?"

"I would be flattered by an invitation," Andrew said, brightly. "Food cooked by such a beautiful woman must taste like the nectar of the gods."

_Idiot_, Yukio thought, savagely. He could see real fear flaring in Melody's eyes. Andrew was being too aggressive -- not, perhaps, deliberately so, but he could see that Melody didn't like it at all. He said, "Actually, Melody, we had planned to take you out to dinner tonight. We owe you for all the work you've done around the house this week."

He glanced at his father. Kenshin gave an almost imperceptible nod of agreement. Andrew had pretty much backed them into a corner; there wasn't any other way, short of being outright rude, to gracefully tell him _no_, he wasn't invited.

"Hey, can I come?" Andrew said, cheerfully. "We were scheduled for a session tonight, but I'd happily substitute a dinner with a lady."

"No!" Melody said, and spun, and ran back up the stairs.

Andrew stared after her. "What ... I'm sorry, I upset her."

"Yeah, you did." Yukio glared at him. "Sod off, Andrew."

"Yukio!" Kenshin said, sharply, in rebuke. Then, in a milder tone of voice, he said, "Andrew, Melody hurt by man, not like being pushed by you. Yukio, go see her, she cry."

"I didn't mean to make her cry!"

"Well, you did." Yukio wasn't about to let Andrew off the hook. "Our session tonight is cancelled. Come back Saturday."

------------------

Melody was not, despite Kenshin's predictions, crying. Instead, she was seated in the window, staring out it at the street below. She'd left the door open.

"Hey." He knocked on the door frame. "You okay, Melody?"

"Y-yeah." She wasn't; she stuttered and stammered when she was upset. "I'm fine, fine, really."

"He's an idiot."

"Y-yeah."

"I won't let anyone hurt you." He could have made some grand vow like, 'I'd die first!' and be perfectly truthful, but he suspected those sorts of theatrics might frighten her worse.

"He's going. I didn't mean for you to make him leave. He looks mad, too." She was staring down at him.

"Ah. Like I said, Andrew's an idiot, and he can be mad all he wants."

"You had a session planned with him -- you said he was your student? I, I, interrupted it."

"Melody," he said, very seriously, "It is okay. I really wasn't looking forward to spending any time with Andrew, anyway. I don't like him. When he's not whinging, he's an utter moron."

Her smile, in response to this, was a bit shaky, but it was genuine. He forged ahead, "Do you want to go to dinner with Ken and me or would you rather stay here and eat in?"

"I don't want to impose on you two ... I-I can m-make d-dinner here. I know you were just, just, trying to stop Andrew from eat-eating with us b-because y-you knew he was scaring me. I ap-appreciate the g-gesture, but you d-don't ..."

"Dinner out it is," he cut her off. "And we owe you. We should be paying _you_. You've been doing every bit of the role of a maid, and where I come from, maids are _paid _for their work."

"Thank you for reminding me that you grew up with servants at your beck and call, a child of true privilege," she said, sounding a good bit more relaxed, suddenly. "Rich boy."

He scratched his calf with the bare toes of his other foot. "Feh. My parents would be quick to remind me that I was born in a mud-floored hut."

She looked him over, head to toe. He was still wearing his fine silk suit and tie from work, though he'd left his shoes at the door. "I have a hard time picturing you as a farmer, Yukio."

He smiled, and reached a hand out, and guided her towards the door with a hand on her shoulder. He'd been touching her a lot, without even thinking about it. "We should go get something to eat."

---------------------------

Kenshin watched the pair of them, his son and the girl, over dinner. He'd started thinking of them as a _pair _shortly after she had moved in with them. They always seemed to be together -- as if there was a gravity they shared, pulling them into orbit around each other. In the morning, he found them fixing breakfast together. In the evening, they would often play cards or just sit and talk on the back steps.

At dinner, they had sat down next to each other, each claiming a chair on the same side of the table. They were talking about horses -- Kenshin was only slightly tracking that conversation. He was paying a bit more attention to their surroundings; they had never gone to this restaurant before. It was in Chinatown, and the proprietor had addressed Yukio in Taishan when they entered -- and then apologized profusely when Yukio had explained he wasn't Chinese.

Kenshin wasn't sure what the Chinese owners made of him; he was letting his hair grow out, and his red roots were two inches long now. Certainly, the fact that two Asian boys were eating dinner with a blond girl was prompting quite a bit of discussion. That all three of them were very well dressed and apparently wealthy was earning even more attention.

Outside, the street was under heavy construction. This part of town had been devastated by the earthquake, eight years before. A large masonry building, with a vaguely Chinese roofline, was going up next door, and Kenshin wondered a bit at the wisdom of building with bricks in a city prone to occasional fits of shaking.

_For tourists_, he thought, of the architecture, and the general ambience. However, the food was good, and inexpensive.

Melody's giggle drew his attention back to the kids. His son had said something to make her laugh. Her eyes were sparkling. "Silly boy!" she protested.

Yukio pouted, lower lip hanging out. Then he said in a squeaky voice, "I'm not silly!"

Kenshin had missed the early part of the exchange, but he smiled anyway. He had not seen Yukio this happy since leaving Britain. And his son seemed to have a real talent for driving the dark shadows from Melody's eyes and making her smile.

_She is a good friend for him, _Kenshin thought. And, _I like her. _

After a moment, the waiter came over, and wariness returned to Melody's blue eyes. Kenshin knew she was afraid. He thought, _She needs something to build her confidence and bolster her courage. _

He would have a word with Yukio about teaching Melody to fight, later. Both of them would likely enjoy the lessons, and Melody would certainly benefit emotionally by learning to defend herself. And -- he had to confess, he was thinking of ways to help make it work between them, if his son and this girl decided they wanted to be more than friends.

_New Mexico has no anti-Miscegenation laws. It's a few days away by train. Or I could send them to Britain. _

Quite simply, he liked Melody, and he enjoyed seeing his son happy.

_Sooner or later, I will need to tell her our secrets, if she remains. I hope she does not think I lied badly to her. _

-----------------------------

"Move your foot back a bit." Yukio said, studying Melody's stance critically. "And your hips, like this ..." he rested his hands on her waist, and showed her how to stand by pulling her into the right position.

When he had her where he wanted her, he walked around behind her, and said, "I'm going to grab you. I want you to try to break the hold."

"O-okay." She was nervous, he knew. It didn't take a genius to figure out that a woman who had been violated would not be comfortable with being forcibly held. Kenshin had suggested he teach her some basic self-defense moves first before moving on to the finer points of martial arts; he had also pointedly warned Yukio to avoid scaring her

He gently put his arms around her shoulders, then tightened his grasp.

He had been teaching her several ways to escape from a man's grip. He felt her tense up -- and then, fluidly twist in his arms, duck, drive her hip into his gut, and give a hard yank to his arm. He could have defeated this first attempt at breaking a hold rather easily -- she was off balance, and not putting enough muscle into it. However, he let her defeat him. He would be meaner to her later, when she was better.

He went tumbling over her shoulder and smacked into the mat with a thud.

"Outstanding!" He sprang to his feet.

She beamed.

He could have basked in the glow of that smile forever. Instead, he said happily, "We should do it again! And this time, try it with your foot farther forward like this ..."

----------------------------

An hour after the lesson, after they'd both showered and returned downstairs, Yukio sat at the kitchen table while Melody started dinner. She had efficiently taken over household chores, briskly telling them that they both worked and she did not, and therefore, it made sense for her to do the domestic work. Besides, she'd teased both of them, she was frightened of their cooking.

"I start school in a week." Yukio said. "The Monday after next." Monday was tomorrow.

"I wish I could go." She glanced at him, a wistful smile playing around her lips.

"You could."

She glanced down and waved a hand at her belly. "Until I started to show. It's rather pointless to go, don't you think?"

He made a face. He hadn't thought about that. He was trying to ignore the idea that she was pregnant with the baby of the man who had raped her. He had not yet summoned the nerve to ask her what she was going to do with the baby, either -- keep it, or give it up for adoption? Unwed mothers were frowned upon in this society, and perhaps she would not want the child as terrible reminder of what had happened.

And adoption wasn't such a bad thing for the child, either. He was living proof of that. If they could find good parents for the kid, maybe it would be best for all concerned.

But he didn't know how to bring the subject up to her -- or, even, if he should. It wasn't really his place.

Maybe he'd leave that discussion to Kenshin. Seventy years of life experience ought to be good for _something_; maybe Kenshin knew how to ask, "So, are you going to keep the baby or not?" without potentially making her cry.

She _was _certain she was pregnant. She said she'd "missed" and she was dry-heaving every morning into the upstairs toilet, and some evenings, too.

She sighed, and in response to his comment about school, she added, "I don't know what I'm going to do, Yukio."

"What do you _want _to do?" This bordered perilously close to that dangerous conversation. It took every bit of his courage not to make some flimsy excuse and flee.

"I don't ..." she shook her head. "It's not the babe's fault. None of this is."

"Nor yours." The words came easily, here. Melody -- well, she hadn't always behaved circumspectly with _him, _but he couldn't see her leading on a man she didn't like.

And even if she had flirted, or worse, "no" meant "no" and that was all there was to it. Kenshin had made that very, very, very clear to Yukio right around the time he was five years old had tried to kiss one of the maid's little daughters against her wishes. The little girl had ended up bawling, and aside from the fact that he'd felt awful for upsetting her, Kenshin had tanned his hide with a very rare and never, ever forgotten spanking.

"A lot of men would blame me." Her voice was very soft.

"They're wrong." He paused, then added, while flexing his arms to display his wiry muscles, "If anyone gives you crap, let me know. I'll deal with them."

She giggled. He liked seeing her laugh -- it drove the shadows away from her eyes for a bit. He sobered. Discussing this was easier now. "Melody, if you want to keep the baby, or give it up -- we'll support you. It's your choice, and neither option is wrong."

She scrubbed hard on a dirty pan for a minute, then said, "What I really want is a family, Yukio. I don't have _anyone_. I want a husband, and children. I ... it's just not _fair. _None of this is."

"Hey." He rose and walked to her and put his arms around her without even thinking. She leaned against him, for a moment, resting her cheek against his shoulder. "I'm telling you, we will get through this. You'll find a husband, and a family, I promise."

-----------------------

Life with Melody in the house quickly fell into a familiar rhythm. She rose before they did, and cooked breakfast and packed them box lunches. While they were at work, she cleaned -- perhaps a bit obsessively, but the house was spotless when she was done. When they returned in the evening, she had dinner waiting. She was a good cook, better than either of them and certainly better than Yukio's mother!

Yukio's first day of school was in early September. He confessed over breakfast to Melody, "This is actually the first time I've ever gone to a real school. I had tutors from the time I was very small through last year, but I never went to a school."

"Why tutors?" She said, then added, "Other than the fact that you're filthy stinking rich, I mean."

"Because my father didn't like that they would force religious instruction on us." He made a face. "And the funny thing is, I learned my Latin from Father Darius in town. And he taught us _about _religion, just didn't preach at us. He gave us the facts to make our own decisions."

"What religion are you?"

He shrugged. "My parents practice a bit of Shinto, if they feel the need for ceremony. Which isn't often. Mostly at funerals. Me ... oh, I don't know."

"My father was born Catholic. We traveled so much, though ... he taught me to respect everyone. I believe in God, but I'm not sure any of the world's religions are the complete truth. God's perfect, but people aren't, and it's people interpreting God's word. Makes for some imperfect beliefs, hmm?"

"You speak of complete sacrilege," he said, teasingly, and was rewarded by a giggle. "Though Father Darius said the same sorts of things -- to us, never to his congregation. But how did we get on such a heavy topic?"

"Somehow, we started with school. And unless you leave right away, you're going to be late, Yukio."

"Oh, you're right." He rose. "I'll see you this afternoon. Thank you for getting up so early to fix my breakfast."

-------------------

School was a large three-story wooden building. Yukio stood in front of it for a long moment, steeling his nerves, before walking up to the front door. He had already gotten his list of classes, and purchased his textbooks, the week before.

He was the only non-white face in the whole school, as far as he could see. Grace was here somewhere, but he hadn't spotted her yet. The school's principal had told him they were the only two Japanese students attending.

He had also learned that there had been a huge political mess several years before -- the Japanese residents of the city wanted their students to attend the "white" schools. The white schools were both better, and tended to be closer to their homes -- the latter had not been a small consideration after the massive damage of the 1906 earthquake. However, the school board had insisted that they attend segregated schools set aside for "colored" students. Grace had told Yukio she had missed an entire year of grade school in 1907 because she had literally been unable to reach the location.

Her parents had sent her back to Japan to a boarding school for that year. Others had not been so fortunate.

The Japanese had eventually won that fight, after it had become an international incident that had reached the very highest levels of government on both sides, and had become a key factor in a treaty between the nations. _Never underestimate the power of the Japanese pride, _Yukio thought, with wry amusement. _We took that issue as a direct insult._

However, there were only a few hundred Japanese in the whole city. Therefore, he was being stared at -- the other students didn't quite know what to make of him, though a few of them seemed to have immediate negative opinions. He caught whispers of _Chinese _and associated derogatory terms. It annoyed him that they assumed everyone with slanted eyes, straight dark hair, and olive skin was from China.

Well, he had gotten quite used to funny looks and worse a very long time ago; he'd gotten certain flavors of them in London, too. _And Shinya and Byron had it ten times worse_, he recalled.

He ignored the other students, holding his head high and pretending he wasn't hearing the whispers or seeing the suspicious -- or simply curious -- looks shot his way from clusters of other students.

His first class was Latin. This would be followed by Trigonometry, Physics, Biology, and Chemistry, and English. He expected most of the classes to be easy, though Trig gave him fits. Hopefully, he could find a tutor to help him, if the class proved too hard.

He found the Latin classroom without difficulty, arriving early. The Latin teacher lifted an eyebrow at him and said, "You must be Yukio Himura."

"Etiam Mr. Smith," he said, with a bright smile. "Ego sum Yukio."

"I understand you've had private instruction in Latin." The teacher said, very rapidly, in the language.

Yukio had no trouble understanding him, but he hesitated before answering. The man was tall, thin, with his mouth pulled down into a frown. He wasn't sure what answer the man wanted him to give. Finally, he decided to be honest, even if it was going to make him look like a privileged brat, and said, "Yes. I have had private tutors for several years."

His response was in Latin -- just as rapid and fluent as the teacher. _It helps that one of my tutors learned the language from the Romans, _Yukio thought, with a bit of amusement when the teacher's eyes widened. He continued, "Latin is one of my better subjects. I am very good with languages. Having learned two very different ones from the time I was a small child makes acquiring others easier."

The teacher's eyebrow rose even higher. "They said that you had some very remarkable exam scores when you took your placement tests."

"Yes sir." He switched to English. "I am very grateful for the opportunities I have been given by my family."

That earned him a grunt. "Your seat's at the back, by the radiator."

----------------

Grace was in his biology class, which was the second to last class of the day. The rest of the day had gone fairly smoothly; teachers seemed to be impressed by his placement test results and nobody in charge had been overtly mean to him. The other students would hassle him eventually; he was expecting it.

Grace smiled when she saw him enter. . "Hello, Yukio!"

"Hello, Grace-san." He smiled. "How are your classes so far?"

She made a face. "I've got Jeremy McNeil in my biology class. He's a pig."

"A pig?"

"And a bully." She twisted around to show dark ink spots on the back of her dress. "He sits behind me and he kept poking me with his pen."

"Why didn't you tell the teacher?" He suspected her dress was permanently stained.

"That would just make it worse, later." She sighed. "My mother is going to be furious when she sees this ... oh, there he is now."

The boy was tall, blond, with a crooked nose and eyes that seemed just a little too widely spaced. His hair was closely cropped. He had entered the classroom and headed for them -- apparently with a seat by the window in mind, but Yukio suspected he just wanted to make them step out of his way and thereby establish his superiority in the pecking order. This was a mind game Yukio was familiar with; Kenji's two obnoxious birth-brothers both did this. He had refused to play for the last several years, too.

"Move, chink." He said, to Grace, even though she was already stepping out of the way.

"Hey." Yukio said, annoyed by the insulting term. "You're a rude bastard."

Jeremy stopped, and stared at Yukio. He was a few inches taller than Yukio, and stared down his nose at him. "And you're looking to have your block knocked off."

Yukio smiled and said cheerfully, "If you'd like to try, feel free to meet me after school. In the meantime, however, please show some manners towards Grace."

This earned him a festering glare.

"Yukio, this isn't necessary." Grace sounded worried.

Yukio smiled at Jeremy. "My place? I'm best at martial arts, but we could do boxing, too, if you prefer. My cousin would be happy to referee. You could even invite your friends to watch."

"How about I just punch your lights out?"

"Well, I'd be willing to have a straight-up brawl with you too," Yukio shrugged, "but it's a bit uncivilized, don't you think? If we're going to fight, I prefer a bout with rules and someone to decide the winner. If you would prefer, one of your friends may also referee."

Jeremy tried to shove past Yukio, with the obvious intent of shouldering him aside. However, Yukio didn't move -- he had been expecting this, and stood his ground. Jeremy was a good thirty pounds heavier, but Yukio suspected he was significantly stronger. Jeremy had a certain soft look to him -- that extra weight was fat, not muscle.

Jeremy bounced off Yukio's shoulder. Yukio rubbed his arm, exaggerating the effect of the impact. "Owe. Bit of a clumsy sod, aren't you?"

"After school, chink." Jeremy growled.

"Okay. At my house. I'll let you decide the form of the fight." Yukio grinned. He was actually looking forward to this match. "And by the way, wrong insult. It's Jap."

After Jeremy had stalked to the back of the room and flung himself into a seat, Grace leaned over to him and said in accented Japanese, "He's going to _kill _you."

"Probably not." Yukio said, cheerfully.

"Won't your mother disapprove?"

"She's not here, but she and my cousin are the ones who _taught _me to fight." He was a bit amused by the thought that Kenshin or Kaoru would ever disapprove of him defending a girl from a bully, or not standing up for himself. "Grace-san, I knew I'd have problems from the moment I enrolled in this school. It's better to deal with the bullies right away -- though my first day of school was sooner than I expected. However, I do not like that he was harassing you."

"Thank you -- but you could get hurt!"

"Grace-san," Yukio said seriously, "If that lard-boy manages to kill me as he threatened, my mother would laugh at me at my funeral."

She shook her head. "I can't believe you just told him to call you a Jap."

"Well," Yukio said brightly, in Japanese, "If he's going to use rude terms, we might as well make sure he gets them right."

She giggled. Yukio, grinning because he'd made her laugh, claimed a seat right next to Jeremy -- Grace, perhaps strategically, took a chair in the next row of desks over, one that put Yukio directly between herself and the bully.

-------------------


	83. Chapter 83

"Yukio, wait up!" Grace hurried to catch up with him.

He stopped until she'd reached him.

Somewhat out of breath, she said, "Do you mind if we walk home together?"

Her house was a half mile farther up into the hills than his. It was a little out of the way for her to walk with him -- it would be faster if she took another street -- but not unduly so. Still, he asked, "Are you worried about Jeremy?"

"You should be," she shook her head. "He's bad news."

Yukio smirked. "I almost hope he does decide to fight me. I haven't had a good scrap since we left Japan a couple of months ago."

"Do you make a _habit _of getting into fights?" She gave him a wide-eyed, worried look.

He laughed. "Not normally ones where people are actually trying to hurt me. However, guys like Jeremy only understand one thing, and that's a swift kick to their backside."

"Which you plan to deliver." Now she was frowning.

"If he takes me up on it."

"What if he beats you?"

"Then he beats me. And afterwards, the mocking I would get from my entire family would make any torment from Jeremy look inconsequential." He paused, considering. "Ken would simple make me work on my forms a bit, and then send me after Jeremy for another bout. However, he would not mock me."

"Work on your forms -- Ken fights?" She seemed surprised by this.

He was astonished she hadn't figured that out. Between his father's scars, his body language and build, and the calluses on his hands, that he was a trained swordsman should be obvious. "He's very good."

"He's a bit of a ... pansy ... isn't he? You know, swishy." When he didn't say a word, she continued, "He's, umm, bent, right?"

Yukio burst out laughing. Every time someone subtly suggested that his father liked men, which was fairly often, he found it vastly amusing. "Ken's no Eonite, Grace. And even if he was, I've been soundly beaten by Shinya -- a friend who _does _like men -- often enough. Shinya taught me quite a bit."

She tittered nervously.

"Sorry." He realized he'd spoken a bit bluntly of delicate matters. Well, she had brought the subject up. "But Ken likes women. Or one in particular, anyway. Trust me when I say he's _not _a poof."

"He has a sweetheart?" She sounded relieved. He found this vaguely bothersome; what would she make of his brother Byron, and Shinya? He couldn't imagine a childhood without the two of them a very substantial part of it.

"Emphatically." He shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat and added, "Are people talking about him again? This rumour comes up every few years."

"My mother, and father. My grandfather says he's not, though. He seems to really like your cousin, for some reason. He acts like he knows him."

_We need to remind Hayato to be careful about how familiar he is with father, _Yukio thought, with a little concern. _Or people will start talking. _

"Aren't you embarrassed by him?" She wrinkled her nose. "He's weird."

He sighed"There's a lot more to Ken than you know, Grace. All of us in my family love him a great deal."

She shook her head in apparent disbelief. "Why can't he be normal?"

"If he was, he wouldn't be Ken." He said this with conviction. Sometimes, his father's behavior made him squirm, but he couldn't imagine Kenshin acting any other way than he did. And he wasn't going to admit to Grace that he was ever made uncomfortable. He changed the subject, "Did you understand what the biology teacher was talking about in regards to our grading system? It sounded really complicated."

"I had a teacher last year who used the same system ..." she started to explain the complicated math behind the teacher's grade scheme. He listened absently, and walked with his hands in his pockets.

When she was done, he thanked her. Silence fell between them, and it was an awkward sort of thing -- he felt like he should say something, but didn't know what. He knew very little about her.

"My father says you're going to court me." Her words surprised him. Then she fell silent, and blushed. "Maybe I said too much."

"Maybe." He, too, was blushing.

The problem was that, short of a picture bride, he just didn't have many options if he wanted to marry a Japanese woman in California. He knew Kenshin expected that he'd at least _try _to court Grace. His father and Grace's grandfather both seemed to like the idea a great deal.

She shot him a glare.

"Oh! No, 'maybe' we can court. Not 'maybe you said too much!'" Now he was really blushing. He felt awful for accidentally implying she'd been too forthright. "I -- I am not good at this, Grace."

He hesitated. She was silent, perhaps waiting for him to say more. He suggested, "Perhaps we could see a motion picture? My cousin would chaperone."

Her eyes lit up. Apparently, it was a good suggestion. She said, "You know, there's a new picture with Tom Mix at the nicklodeon."

Relieved that she liked the idea, he smiled and asked, "Who's Tom Mix?"

And he heard all sorts of enthusiastic chatter about cowboys and Indians, and trick riding, and gunfighting, and heroes all the way home. Apparently, quiet and demure Grace had a talkative side when it came to the movies.

At his front door, he interrupted a description of Tom Mix's horse to say, "Would you like to come in a bit? There's someone I'd like you to meet."

"Who is that?"

Melody had apparently heard him outside, because she opened the door at that moment. "Hi, Yukio. I've got dinner ... hi."

The two girls stared at each other. Melody's _hi _had been very tiny; Grace didn't say a word.

Yukio said, "Grace, this is Melody. Melody is staying with us for now; her father died. Melody, this is Grace -- we go to school together."

"Hi," Melody repeated. He heard strain in her voice and wondered if something had happened to upset her.

"Hello," Grace said, "I didn't know that Yukio had a girl living with him."

"It's not like that!" Yukio protested, blushing. "She just needs a place to stay. And she's a friend."

"A friend -- ah." Grace suddenly smiled very brightly. In heavily accented Japanese, she said, "Ken's friend?"

"No," Melody said, coldly, "I am not Ken's lover."

Yukio gave her a startled look. He had not been aware she spoke any Japanese. Perhaps she had just heard Ken's name and came to a logical conclusion. However, her tone of voice was distinctly unfriendly towards Grace. He was startled by that.

"I made cookies," Melody said, holding the door open. "If your friend would like some."

"No, thank you." Grace cut her a quick bow that wasn't nearly as polite as it should be. "I should be hurrying home."

After she was gone, Yukio regarded Melody for a long moment. Melody finally exploded, "She thinks I'm ... I'm ... I'm ... I'm a bad, bad, g-girl! To stay with two men!"

"No, she doesn't."

"Yes she does!" Melody ran for the stairs and scrambled up them. He heard the bedroom door bang shut.

Yukio said a very bad word that would have earned him chores had Kenshin heard, then followed her. Through the door, he called, "Melody? Melody, can I come in?"

"No!"

"Melody, did something happen?" He didn't think that her outburst had been because of anything that Grace had done.

"Yes!"

"Please, can I come in?"

"It's not, not, locked. It's your room anyway." She was crying. He could hear it in her voice.

He pushed the door open. She was curled up in the window seat, rocking back and forth. Her blond hair had come out of its clip and fell in her face in a messy, tangled mass.

"Tell me what happened?" He asked, standing in the middle of the room. He didn't know what to do with his hands.

"That terrible neighbor lady. She's awful." She looked up at him, eyes huge through her blond curls.

"Oh, her. Marge, right?" He still couldn't figure out where to stand. Should he sit down next to her, or claim a seat on the edge of the bed?

"Her, her kid. He fell down and skinned his hands up. She was-was-was ..." She took a deep breath, and exhaled. "She wasn't home. She let her little boy stay home alone while she went s-s-shopping! So I washed his hands off inside and got the gravel out of the cuts. And g-g-gave him some cookies, because he was so brave."

"She was mad?" He guessed.

"S-S-She came home and I took him over there. I offered to b-b-babysit in the future when she had errands to run. I figured she could go get s-s-stuff for m-m-me too. I-i-it w-would save a trolley fare." She glanced down at her hands. "She hates you two. Why does she hate you?"

"I honestly don't know." Yukio finally settled down on the edge of the bed. "She's the one who c-called the cops on Ken. I swear to you that he did nothing at all wrong, except be Ken."

"I didn't know that. I d-d-didn't do, do, anything wrong either, did I? I d-d-didn't want the kid to cry."

"Nah. She's just a mean old biddy. What did she do?"

"She, she said I was a woman of the night, though she was a lot nastier about how she said it Because I'm living here. With you two. She, she said this was a house of prostitution. I think she believes you're using the d-dojo as a front."

"Like I said, mean old biddy." He had never been more tempted to punch a woman in his life. Had it been a man who had said something like that to her, he would have not hesitated to beat the man bloody. Melody didn't deserve to deal with such cruel words. She'd been through enough.

"She called the police. And the police came."

"Oh, no." He started to rise. Melody looked up and pinned him in place with a terrified look. Her blue eyes were enormous. "Oh, no." He sank back down. "What did they do to you?"

"T-They s-s-said I c-c-couldn't stay here. That it wasn't seemly. They said th-th-there's a home for unwed mothers I sh-sh-should go to." She was crying hard. "I-I-I know those places. They'll preach at me, and tell me I'm a bad girl, and, and, I need to repent. I haven't done anything wrong. What Nathan did to me was _his _crime, and no crime of mine! And I do not want to give this baby up, and they make the girls give them up! He is all the family I have!"

All things considered, he decided, the cops could have done far worse things to her. He breathed a small, silent breath of abject relief. She was upset, but this was something he thought they could deal with.

"They said that the preacher wh-wh-who runs it will be by tonight to pick me up. I don't want to go! I don't want them to make me give up my baby! I'm all alone, he's all I'll have in the world!"

"You don't have to go." He finally stood up and walked over to her, and settled onto the seat next to her. He held his arms open, and she crawled into them. "Melody, you don't have to go."

She clung to him. She had fistfuls of his shirt clenched in her hands, like a baby. "I l-l-like it here. I like taking care of you, and your cousin. Why can't I stay, at least until the baby's born? I doubt you two want a brat around, but, but ... I was thinking, there's space over your garage for a little room for me. Do you think your cousin would let me stay for awhile?"

"I think he would." He kissed her forehead. "And I think that's a fantastic idea, to make you an apartment. I'll ask Ken about it. And as far as the baby goes, if you want to keep the child -- Ken adores children. The more the better, as far as he is concerned. I'm sure he'd be fine with it."

Surely, his father could see that she needed to stay. What was the issue with adding one more stray to the family?

She exhaled and relaxed a bit, leaning against his shoulder. "They said they'd charge me with vagrancy if, if, if I didn't move to the Unwed Mother's Home."

"But you're not a vagrant!" He protested. "You live here!"

She nodded. "I k-k-know that. B-b-but they said they'd arrest me. They're accusing me of being a p-p-prostitute, and they charge prostitutes with vagrancy! Also, I'm worried about what they'll do to you two."

"We haven't done anything wrong, any of us." He hugged her close. "We'll get a lawyer and fight if they arrest you. It's not right. The way they treat you, the way they treat us -- it's _not right_."

"You'd fight for me?" She said, slowly.

"Of course!" He was shocked at the thought that he wouldn't.

"But ..." She looked up at him, and then shyly stroked his cheek. "Yukio, would you kiss me?"

"Huh?" He realized how he was holding her -- she had crawled into his lap, and was curled against his chest. He had meant it to be a chaste hug, like he would give to one of his sisters. Suddenly, it felt a lot more intense. "Umm ..."

He was surprised, a little, that she was even interested, given what she had recently been through. However, Melody was tough.

He said softly, "I'm ... this isn't a good idea."

That was one of the hardest things he'd ever said in his life. He knew it would upset her -- and, in truth, he wanted to continue to hold her, and kiss her. But it wasn't _right_.

She pulled way, cheeks flaming. "I'm sorry. I thought you felt that way about me."

"It's just that ... well, this sort of thing is what we're being accused of doing." Plus, he felt like he was betraying Kenshin's trust in him -- Kenshin hadn't said a word, but Yukio knew his father was expecting him to behave properly and with decorum around the pretty girl. "And --"

"And there's Grace." She did yank free, now. She stood in the middle of the bedroom, staring at him. There were bright spots of color on her cheeks.

"No!" He denied, because Grace hadn't even been a thought in his head. Then shook his head, and because she should have been one of his considerations, he amended, "Yes. Maybe. Grace is, well ... Ken, and her grandfather, want me to court her. It's an arranged thing. I don't love her. I'm not even sure I could. But it's not just about love, it's about a good match. Her family has an enormous amount of political power, and it would be good for the family business if we had ties to them."

"Do you _like_ her?"

"I like you a hell of a lot better." He tucked his knees to his chest and stared over them at her. He knew all the reasons why Kenshin had gently suggested he get to know Grace. And suddenly, he felt terribly empty inside. "I wish ... I _hate _who I am."

"What?" She seemed stunned by this.

"I hate it. It's not fair. Just because of what I look like, I can't court you. It's not fair. I woule give anything in the world to be somebody else."

She was staring at him. Then she said tartly, "Don't be stupid."

"Huh?"

"I said, don't be stupid. You can court me. We could get married. It's legal in -- well, the closest state would be New Mexico. My father found that out, when I told him I was writing a letter to you. In all honesty, he said he hoped we got together, before he died. He said I should keep writing you. He said he liked you. And there's a Japanese community in Phoenix -- you wouldn't be alone, if that's what you're worried about. There are a number of truck farmers living there who are Japanese."

He blinked at her. And he wondered what a bunch of doubtless Issei farmers would think of him, if he showed up with a pretty blond girl on his arm, and a British accent. He doubted they'd immediately clasp him to their bosoms and call him kin. And the anglo farmers in the area wouldn't be much more welcoming.

Besides, he didn't know a damn thing about farming.

Though it might give him a chance to kick Nathan's ass. Kenshin's solicitor had discretely found out Nathan had survived being bludgeoned by a shovel, though she had fractured his skull and broken his cheekbone and nose. She had hit him more than once. There were no warrants out for her arrest; Nathan had not contacted the police and was claiming a horse had kicked him.

She folded her arms and added crossly to Yukio, "I thought you were holding back because you didn't want to marry a white woman. That you wanted to stick to your own kind. Now I find out you're just being stupid. I thought you were braver than that."

"Huh?"

"Or maybe you don't want a woman who's been spoiled."

"Gods! No."

"Or one who's carrying the child of a rapist."

"No!" He denied. "It's not that."

"Then you're scared of what people might think?" Her eyes were glittering, and angry. Somehow, he'd really upset her. "You said you'd give anything to be able to court me. How much is _anything_? A little public harassment, perhaps? Some danger? The disapproval of your family? Is it worth it to you? Or would you rather be safe and marry someone like Grace that your family would approve of?"

"I ..." He bowed his head. "I owe so much to my family."

"I see." She hugged herself. Suddenly, she sounded very small and broken. He wanted to hug her again, to comfort her, and _he _was the man who'd just added to her griefs. He added sick guilt to the deep, echoing emptiness in his heart. Very softly, she said, "I guess I am truly alone in the world."

"No! We can be friends ..." the words were bitter in his mouth. He didn't want _just friends_. He'd known that from the first time he had seen her.

"I ..." She closed her mouth and just stared at him. Her eyes were huge, and he could see that she was just shaking. "I ..."

He turned his face away. He couldn't even look at her. There was a huge, aching, yawning chasm in his soul.

She turned away. "I'm going to pack my things."

"What?"

"My things. Pack them."

Now she wasn't even looking at him. She was staring at the wardrobe, where they'd put her dresses. "I'm sorry I'm not worthy."

"I'm sorry."

"Maybe the Home won't be so bad."

"I can come visit you."

"I doubt they'll let me see you. They have certainly have very strict rules about the behavior of their ladies. I had a friend who was in a Home for Wayward Girls -- the only men they were allowed to speak to were gentlemen who were approved. Do you really think they'll ..." she turned her face away. "But I'm not worth it to you, anyway."

He rose. Suddenly, he wanted to run, very far away. He grabbed his camera off the dresser in the bedroom and ran out the door -- he wasn't even sure why he took it with him. As he galloped down the stairs two at a time, he heard her brokenhearted sobs behind him.

--------------------

Kenshin bumped the back door open with his hip, and backed through with an armload of groceries. He had been to the fishmarket on the way home and had a nice fat sea bass wrapped in paper in the bag, so fresh that it was still twitching and making the bag rustle. Along with the bass there were the fixings for a salad, and some steamed dumplings.

He was really growing quite fond of his automobile. He had been over to Chinatown for the dumplings, then to the fishmarket, and a greengrocer, and then home, in a fraction of the time it would have taken him to do everything even on horseback. And it definitely beat walking, or riding the trolleys.

And now that he was home, rather than spending fifteen or twenty minutes caring for a horse, all he had do was park the vehicle, turn it off, and walk inside. Very simple.

The house was silent, and dark. There was also a large puddle of water spreading across the kitchen floor. The source was the ice box. Kenshin set the whole bag of groceries down inside the icebox, and pulled the drip pan out. Melody had been dumping it every day, but she had apparently forgotten this evening.

_Somebody ought to invent a mechanical refrigerator that's economical for the home, _Kenshin thought, with irritation. He pulled the pan of frigid water out, and carried it sloshing to the door, where he dumped it off the back porch. Then, with a moue of displeasure, he went upstairs to get towels from the linen closet to clean up the mess. He wasn't sure where the kids were -- he hoped they were out having fun, perhaps celebrating Yukio's first day of school.

There were quiet sobs coming from Melody's room.

He forgot about cleaning up the water -- it would wait. Instead, he rapped on the door and then said, "Melody-dono?"

"Mr. Shin." He heard a deep, ragged breath from inside. "I'm okay."

Obviously, she was not. "Can I come in?"

"I'm okay!"

He pushed the door open anyway. She was seated on the bed with her back to the wall, and tears streamed down her face.

"I'm okay, Mr. Shin," she said, as if saying it would make it so. "I'm okay, really."

"My English must be worse than I think, because I do not understand correct definition of 'okay'," he told her. "I do not know 'okay' includes tears."

She wiped at her eyes. Shakily, she explained, "I'm leaving. There's a Home for Wayward Girls. The preacher who runs it's supposed to come by tonight to get me."

"And you want this?" He knew she didn't. Otherwise, she wouldn't be crying.

"I think it, it's the best thing."

She was stuttering, which meant she was very upset. He regarded her for a moment, then walked to the window and sat down in the seat. Calmly, he asked, "Why does Melody-dono think that leaving this home is for the best?"

"I ..." she didn't want to talk about it, and he could tell. However, he thought it was important she tell him.

"Did Yukio do something?"

She looked sharply away. "He just told me the truth."

"Aa. The truth."

"It's not fair."

"Much in life has no fair." He hated his inability to express himself fluidly in English. He was pretty sure that he'd just mangled that sentence. "Has no fairness? How would you say this?"

"Much ..." She trailed off, and gave him a confused look. Her tears had completely stopped and she said, "Mr. Shin, I have _no idea _how to make what you said work in proper English."

"I apologize," he said, with a grimace that he hoped conveyed his frustration. "My poor English make saying what I need to very difficult. But things need say. Saying? I need to say things ...?"

She sighed, loudly. "Mr. Shin, I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but there's nothing you can say that will help. Yukio told me I'm not worth the trouble it would cost him to court me. I'm ... I thought he liked me more than that."

"Ah. He worry about your safety. And ours."

"No," she shook her head, vigorously. "Not that. He worry you and Mrs. Kamiya won't approve. He said that Grace would be a better match for his _family._"

"This is true." Kenshin said, mind racing. What had Yukio done? "But I approve of you. I just worry about how hard life have -- be? -- for both of you. I would not stand in the way if you were to seriously court. I like you, Melody-dono, and if you and Yukio decide that you want to try, I give my blessings."

"Oh." She paused. "Yukio thinks you want him to marry someone like Grace."

He snorted, surprised by that. Well, he had made a point to take Yukio to meet her. "Grace? No. I encourage him to meet Grace, but after I meet Grace -- that a marriage I would oppose."

"Really?"

He nodded, and tried to explain, "Grace is ... not a good match for Yukio. They would bored -- be bored -- with each other. For long marriage, need someone who interest you, always."

_Kaoru_. He was feeling her absence with a ferocious longing. He missed it all -- the physical parts; her laughter and the loving, teasing abuse; the banter that kept him humble. He missed her intelligence, and her often strident but generally correct advice. Life without her bossy orders was _boring_. And quite simply, he was _lonely _without her. He tried to fill the time he would have spent with her by visiting with his new friends -- Connor, Hayato, even Morton. But still, he was lonely.

Kaoru would always interest him. He couldn't imagine life without her. But he had seen friends grow tired of their mates because they had little in common.

Melody was silent. She rocked back and forth.

"Melody, I have many worries. Yukio care for you a great deal, but not have easy life, should you marry. I have been different than others my whole life. I have had people afraid of me, I have had a friend killed because of who I am. They thought I was a demon, and came to kill me and my family. I was not there. My friend defended my family and died in the fight."

She was staring at him with wide blue eyes. "Because of your hair?"

"Because of what I look like." His Immortality would be a shock for another date. This was not a lie. "Melody-dono, being different is not easy. This is why I prefer for Yukio to marry someone for who there be no comment about. Another Japanese girl -- nobody care. You, people care in a wrong way. People notice. People not approve. And this make your life very hard. You may find a place to live, hard. Get friends, hard -- though friends you have, be good ones. Yukio find work to find, hard, if not working for Jessica. Life very hard."

"I ... know this."

"You are young. Difficult to know, for you and Yukio, if the hard parts will be worth the relationship. He is young, but he is much like me -- he is good at committing to things, and he keeps his word. He marry you, he will see it as an obligation. He never leave you. If too hard, later, for you and he -- I fear the pain and hurt might come between you, and you come to hate each other. Your marriage come to be a burden, not a joy, because of the hate of others."

"I ..." She fell silent. She did that a lot, he had noticed, when she disagreed with someone. He wasn't sure if she was too polite to argue, or if she was simply unable to formulate her protests into words. Her eyes were huge, and tears leaked soundlessly down her cheeks.

"I know Yukio be ever loyal, even if it destroy him, to you. I do not know you well enough to say same of you."

"I ..."

"You do not need to respond to that. I want you _think _about it." He rose. "Do you know where Yukio went?"

"He took his camera and he left. I don't know."

He had a sudden bad premonition. Yukio wasn't in a good frame of mind to be bad-cop hunting. "I'm going to try find -- finding -- him."

"Wait!" She said, a tiny cry with enormous emotion behind it. "The police were here. They said I had to leave, that they'd arrest me if I didn't. As a vagrant, they said. They accused me of being a p-p-prostitute, and you and Yukio of being my-my-my ..."

"Oh," he growled, vexed. "I am growing _tired _of this nonsense."

"Th-they said ... said ..."

"Said you had to leave. This why you go to the girl's home?" He didn't really need her to confirm this.

"Yeah."

"I am going to send telegram to my solicitor." Kenshin suspected there was amber bleeding around the corners of his eyes. He was indignant enough on her behalf to want to beat some sense into someone, and it had been a long time since anyone had provoked him to this point. By pure habit, he started to focus, to draw his fighting spirit to the forefront. If a fight was required, someone was going to get it. At this point, he truly didn't care if it was a legal fight or a physical one.

She was staring at him in shock.

He knew she wasn't leaving because she wanted to; she was leaving because she was being threatened. He would not allow this. He growled, "_You_, stay here."

"What if the preacher comes?" Her voice was tiny.

"Then, do not answer door." He didn't give her a chance to say no. He just turned and stalked out. He had, quit simply, _had enough _of this.


	84. Chapter 84

"Hey," Yukio said, ducking into the greengrocer's at the bottom of the hill, "Have you seen the cops?"

He didn't need to specify _which _cops. They had a beat, and everyone in the neighborhood knew them. The neighborhood's collective opinion wasn't exactly a good one.

The clerk was a tall man, painfully thin, with a handlebar mustache and eyes enormously magnified by thick glasses. He grinned when he saw Yukio, and said, "They were here about an hour ago. They went that way ..." he pointed north.

"Thanks."

"Good work, kid, I must tell you."

"Huh?"

The grocer reached beneath the counter and handed him a newspaper.

"Oh!" Yukio said, delighted. One of his photographs was on the front page -- the old woman, with her face battered and bruised. Then it occurred to him that the man knew his secret identity as the photographer in the night. "Umm, how did you know ..."

"She told us." He tapped the picture, indicating the woman. "She comes in here selling vegetables, sometimes. Her cousin has a farm. Good tomatoes. She said it was an Chinese lad with a camera that she did not know. Tall, skinny. And an English accent. That sounds like you."

Taking the woman's picture had been a risk. He had not given her name, and had trusted in the anonymity of being one Asian face among many. He had forgotten about how distinctive his accent was -- to him, it wasn't an accent. Everyone else talked funny.

"I am Japanese," he said, a gently voiced correction.

"Oh." The man blinked. "I didn't know that."

Yukio shrugged. He fished out a few pennies, bought the paper, and then took off, "I am off to snap some cops."

"Good luck. And tell that cousin of yours that we have some fresh plums. I know he likes them."

"Thanks!" Yukio waved and headed out.

-------------------

A mile away, he found his quarry as they walked their beat. Yukio, camera hidden under his coat, followed a block behind, casually strolling after them.

They were, he had discovered, rather predictable. He followed them for fifteen minutes before they turned up a side alley between two rows of houses. He took to the rooftops by climbing a trellis, and silently paced them.

He was not disappointed -- they found a vagrant, sleeping under a pile of rags, and woke him with a sharp blow from a night sticks. He was too far away to hear what they were saying, but it was probably "move along now!" and the bum started to get up and leave. Yukio heard a thud, a grunt, a yelp.

Yukio, wincing on the man's behalf, crept closer to the edge of the building. The roof had a very steep pitch; he sat down with his heels digging into the tiles. It was a dizzying two-story drop over the edge, and he was directly above them. He leaned forward, between his knees, camera held to his eye with one hand, and flash gun gripped in the other.

He had perfected the technique to set off the flash. The film in the camera was fairly slow -- it was designed to be used under bright daylight -- so under low-light conditions (and now, there was only a full moon in the sky) he could keep the shutter open for quite awhile. He bit down on the shutter bulb and the camera clicked. He waited for the right moment, flash gun held out to his side. One good burn had taught him cautious respect for the magnesium powder it contained.

The older, taller cop pulled his nightstick back for a hard blow. As it was descending, and the hobo cowering, Yukio triggered the flash gun. The light, and noise, were deafening and a cloud of acrid smoke rolled skywards.

He turned to run.

And slipped.

For a dizzying moment, he waved his arms in the air, terrified he was going to flip over backwards and tumble two stories to the cobblestone alley below. Finally, he threw his balance forward, and scrambled up the roof, getting splinters in his knees and palms from the shake shingles.

Something hit him in the calf with force like the kick from a horse and there was a simultaneous loud noise. It was a stunning, unexpected blow. He tried to recover, to run forward, but something was wrong -- his leg wouldn't bear his weight. It folded beneath him. He started sit down, shocked at his body's sudden betrayal. He lost his balance, somersaulted backwards, scrabbled for purchase on the steep surface and failed.

And he was falling backwards, through the air.

He twisted desperately, trying to get his legs beneath him. Acrobatics had been a substantial part of his training with his father -- Kaoru had taught him to fight, but Kenshin had trained him to run and jump and do flips and rolls and various forms of exciting gymnastics. It had been a game when he was little. Jessica had teased them that they had a future in the circus if they ever decided to run away from home together.

Now, it was life and death.

He landed feet first, intending to tuck and roll. Two stories was a scary drop, but he could roll and distribute the force of the impact ... But his leg went the wrong _way_. It was as if he had no control over it. He went sprawling, and flung his arms out to catch himself.

He still had the flash gun, loaded with magnesium powder and potassium permanganate -- some of the the same ingredients one would use in fireworks -- clutched in his hand. He smashed the gun into the ground underneath his weight. There was a tremendous_flash _and a blow to his face and chest that knocked him backwards.

And then, nothing.

-------------------

Kenshin heard the _crack _of a gun as he jogged up a street of rowhouses. The noise was loud and sharp in the cool, humid night air, echoing off buildings. In near instant reaction, two sets of blinds on the quiet residential street were yanked shut -- and one door opened, and a less cautious person stuck his head outside to see what had happened.

Gunfire wasn't entirely unknown in the city; it still had a certain _element of_ _mining camp_, as Hayato put it. Plus there was some spats involving organized crime, and various disputes between gangs in Chinatown. However, that gunshot had come from a residential area. Usually, when he heard fighting, it was towards Chinatown, down by the dock, or in the red light district.

He broke into a hard run towards the sound.

------------------------

He couldn't see.

Yukio tried to rise, years of training with his parents -- blindfolds, and sensing _ki _-- spurring him to rise and defend himself, or rise and run. Kaoru would have told him to fight; Kenshin, far more practical, would have told him to flee and get his victory on another day.

His leg folded underneath him and he toppled back to the ground. Neither option was going to work.

He couldn't see.

And then what had been heat and pressure in his leg, his chest, his face bloomed into pain.

Before he could scream, or even moan, a blow struck him on the back of the head. The force of the impact made white light explode in his skull.

------------------

Kenshin came around the corner and faced downhill between two parallel stretches of rowhouses. The street was narrow, the houses tall, and the single streetlight barely cast enough light to make out four figures.

An old man, flattened against a wall, cowering.

Two cops.

One cop had a gun leveled in his hand at the head of a fourth figure.

The fourth figure was tall and thin and sprawled askew on the ground, laying in the manner that only the unconscious or dead could manage. Still, despite the fact that the boy on the ground was obviously no threat, the cop was about to pull the trigger and execute him.

Kenshin didn't say a word. He didn't have time. He just launched himself forward, feet barely touching the ground, as he ran for all he was worth. They said he had God-like speed. Had he spared time to think, he would have simply called it a father's desperation.

"Hey!" Tall Cop shouted a warning.

Short Cop, holding the gun, looked up. He saw Kenshin leaping through the air at him. He yanked the gun around.

Kenshin slammed the flat side of the sakabatou into the man's hand. The gun fired, and a bullet whizzed past his shoulder, so close he felt the draft of its passing. He was still moving, however; he smashed the sword into the man's face, and felt the reverberation of shattering bones and splintering teeth through the fine steel.

On, to the other cop. The man was starting to draw his gun. Kenshin shattered his elbow, and then to make sure he was going to go down and stay down, he aimed for the man's knees. One hard blow bent the knee in a direction it wasn't intended to go.

"For Kaoru!" he said, as he brought the dull side of the sword up, hard, between the man's legs, before he could collapse.

He wasn't a vindictive man. Normally.

Tall Cop made a completely inarticulate noise and toppled over. He wouldn't be getting up any time soon.

Kenshin flipped his hair over his shoulder -- it had come loose during the brief fight -- then turned to his son. Yukio hadn't moved. In the dim glow of the streetlight, he could see black pools of blood, and his limbs were askew in ways they weren't supposed to bend. He was truly relieved to see the slight rise and fall of his son's chest.

Kenshin turned to the old man cowering against the wall. The vagrant started to scramble away. Kenshin sheathed his sword and said, in a measured, too-calm voice, "I need your help getting Yukio home. Are you able to walk?"

A wordless nod, from the man.

Kenshin knelt beside Yukio. In Japanese, he murmured, "My son. My son, can you hear me?"

"D... daddy?"

"Aaa. It's me."

"... what happened?"

"We're going to get you home." He spoke reassuringly, while he surveyed his son's injuries with growing dismay. Broken bones, obviously. In the dim light he could see burns on his face and hands, glistening darkly. His hair was matted with blood. He was certain there were other injuries he couldn't see.

"Daddy? Is that you?" Yukio's voice was slurred; he sounded drunk.

"Aaa, It's me. We're going to get you home, that we will."

"Oh." Silence. Then, "Who's there?"

"It's me, Yukio."

"Daddy? Is that you? I can't see you."

"It's me." He tried to sound comforting. Yukio's confusion was terrifying to him.

"Who's there?"

"It's me. Your father."

"Daddy? Is that you?"

Kenshin's heart sank. "Help me with him," he implored the old man. "Help me get him home."

--------------------------


	85. Chapter 85

Melody quietly climbed the stairs. In the last two days, she'd gotten quite good at finding the silent steps -- the ones that didn't creak.

She would do anything to avoid waking him when he had managed to grab a blessed snatch of sleep.

Carrying a basin of water, and rags, and several rolls of clean bandages, she made her way silently down the hall. There was no noise from the bedroom, so she hoped he was asleep. Even with doses of morphine sulfate in frighteningly large amounts, he still woke screaming.

If he was asleep -- or unconscious -- she resolved to wait until he roused to change the dressings on his leg and his horrible burns. She saw no sense in disrupting what little sleep he was getting. Sleep healed as much as any medication they could give him.

He had lost two fingers on his right hand. She and the Chinese doctor that Ken had summoned had amputated the remains the morning after his injury. His shoulder had been charred nearly to the bone, as well, because he had fallen on top of the flash gun. A couple inches to the left and he likely would have been killed; the blast would have blown apart his neck.

_Damn stuff is used to make fireworks. Photographers all have a death wish, I swear, _she thought, acidly. This was not the first time that she'd seen someone injured in the pursuit of a picture. Half the chemicals they used in developing film were downright explosive -- the man who had come up with the idea of heating nitroglycerin to develop glass plates had to have been insane -- or they were frankly poisonous.

Though generally speaking, those injured photographers generally did not also have a bullet wound that had shattered a leg just above the ankle, a broken arm, and a serious concussion.

He was, as she'd guessed, asleep. However, he was only barely out -- as she peeked in the room, Yukio moaned slightly, and twisted in the bed. The morphine she had given him earlier that morning was likely wearing off.

At Yukio's noise, Ken looked up. He was seated in the window, as he had been since last night. He stared morosely at his cousin, then looked sharply aside.

The little man had cut off his dark hair two nights ago -- he had done it in the bathroom while she and the doctor had worked on his cousin. What remained was short, red, and cowlicked. Without his hair, he could have passed for a schoolboy with no effort at all. Had she seen him on the street, she would have looked at him once as _cute_, and then dismissed him as _too young for me_.

Ken met her gaze. His odd, lightly colored eyes were rimmed with deep circles. If he'd slept in two days, she wasn't aware of it. She'd seen him leave twice to use the bathroom, otherwise, he had kept a constant vigil.

Without a word, he looked away.

She walked silently across the room and sat down beside him.

He didn't say anything for a long moment. He didn't react at all, unless a thousand mile stare past her and over Yukio's restless form was something she had prompted. But, finally, in a very low voice, he focused back on her, blinked once, and then whispered, "Have you had anything to eat?"

"No," she confessed. Not since the night before, anyway, when Grace had showed up with a pot of soup for Yukio. He had barely eaten any of it, then promptly puked up what he had consumed.

After they had cleaned up the bedroom, Grace had insisted she finish the leftover soup, so it wouldn't go to waste. Somehow, she had managed to eat it.

Ken rose. She heard his knees popped, and he was moving stiffly -- she thought he'd been sitting in one position for a very long time. "I need to talk to you."

"Someone should stay with him ..."

"I'll know when he wakes," Ken said, quietly. "I'll sense it."

She nodded acquiescence, and -- after a long look at Yukio, who was rolling his head back and forth -- followed Ken down the hall, then up the stairs to the third floor study.

He stared out the window for a long moment before speaking. "The police may be after me, Melody."

"Maybe. I saw Hayato in the market; he said that the gossip was two cops were nearly killed by an assailant with a baseball bat."

"One was to kill Yukio. He was down when I arrived. No threat. It would have been murder ... baseball bat?" He blinked at her.

"It's what you used, right?"

"Et-to ... No."

She smirked at the look on his face. She guessed he'd used a sword, then; perhaps one of the wooden ones that hung on the walls downstairs. "The cops are also claiming it was a large, muscular guy who stands well over six feet tall who beat them up. A cowboy, they're saying. With long dark hair. Possibly rabid."

He snorted, amused despite his obvious distress. "Rabid?"

"It's a good thing you cut your hair. They're looking for someone with black hair."

"I'm also not over six feet tall," he said, mildly.

She tilted her head to the side, "How tall are you, anyway?"

"A little over five feet." His expression was distinctly sour.

He was lying, she thought, about his height, proud peacock that he was. It took about two seconds in Kenshin's presence for even the most dense person to figure out that he had a fiercely vain streak.

He was a little under five foot. She was five six, and he barely came up to the top of her shoulder. And Ken was so very thin. As a consequence, every time she saw him, she wanted to feed him. However, to her frustration, he ate like a bird even when she tried to tempt him with her best efforts -- he insisted on tiny portions, and mostly fruits and vegetables and fish. If she made cookies, he would eat half of one and make her eat the rest "for the baby," and if she made a pie, he would consume the smallest sliver of a slice.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. His words drew her back to the discussion at hand, "If they are not give an accurate description, then perhaps I have less fear of arrest."

She nodded agreement. "And I will say that it would be very unconvincing if they tried to convince a judge -- or, worse, the newspapers -- that _you _beat both of them up. I hope you don't take offense at this Ken, but you're the size of a ten year old. The papers are already ridiculing the two of them and claiming they got what they deserved. Because of Yukio's photographs."

"He do good work." Kenshin paused, then added, with a sigh, "Yukio taller than me, at ten."

He was quiet again, staring out past her at nothing in particularly. After a moment, he added, "I always think, Yukio have so much talent, and drive. And loyalty, to us. To his family. I think he be a fine man someday. I think ..." Ken looked back at her. "When I was fifteen, Melody-dono, when I was _his _age, I fight in a war."

She blinked at that. She'd asked Ken how tall he was; now, she wondered if she should ask him how _old _he was. But then again, Japan always seemed to be fighting with somebody -- officially or unofficially.

Ken sighed. "I make many mistakes, with Yukio."

"You can't blame yourself for this ..."

He looked sharply away. Instead of directly responding to that, he said, "This one is sending Yukio home, as soon as can travel. This one would much like a girl who care for him to travel with him, that he would, if she would like to go."

"To Japan?" She guessed. His phrasing was weird even for Ken -- very humble. He was staring at the ground.

"Japan not home, for Yukio. Home for him is with brother, in England, and family there, that it is." Ken met her gaze now. His eyes were suspiciously bright. "This one will pay for your passage there, and back to America-- or this one's daughter-in-law and son will give you employment in their household. It is a large household, but they are fair and kind. And -- my son will be there, of course."

"Will you be going home too?"

He blinked hard and looked sharply away. His voice was level, but more accented than usual, when he said, "I can not return to England."

"Wait -- your son?" She blinked, imagining a small infant. "You can't go back to England, and you have a son there?"

"Not quite." Ken's response, and the caution in his voice, left her confused. "I believe Yukio is about to wake. After, I have much you need know, before you become more involved in this family."

At that moment, as Ken had predicted, Yukio groaned in the next room. They both jumped up; Ken practically ran back into the room.

"I can't see ..." He clawed at the bandages across his face. That was, at least, an improvement over simple sobbing pain. "Daddy, I can't _see_."

"Shh." Kenshin crouched beside the bed and started to stroke his hair. Yukio flinched instantly away. Melody thought it was the expectation of pain, more than the touch itself, that made him react. "I'm here."

"Can't _see_."

"You have bandages on your eyes," Melody said, briskly. "Do you remember me telling you that, this morning?"

"Hurts."

"Well, yes."

"Y-yeah. I remember. What _happened_?"

He sounded confused -- particularly the _Daddy _bit -- but claiming to remember an earlier conversation was an improvement. His bell had been rung pretty thoroughly; he had a rather severe concussion. That he had never lost consciousness was a good thing, she thought, though it was definitely a blessing in disguise. His burns were quite painful, worse than his broken leg and collarbone and wrist by far. She wished he would pass out when they cleansed his wounds.

"You've been shot, fell off a roof, and burned your shoulder and face," she reminded him.

"My _eyes_. They _hurt_."

"They're burnt too, and your eyelids." She put a hand on his undamaged shoulder.

He tried to twist away, and then winced when this movement jostled his injuries. "Owe!"

"I'm going to take the bandages off your face. I need to treat the burns." She started to peel the plasters back.

"O-okay." She saw his jaw clench. For the first time, he didn't cry out, though she saw him swallow hard several times and he was so rigid he was shaking. He had enough morphine in him still to blunt the worst of the pain, though he was certainly feeling every movement, every touch.

His eyes, beneath the cotton, were ferociously red and they watered freely -- the packing she'd used was soaked through with tears. He blinked at her and said, "Feels like there's _sand _in them. I can't see you. You're blurry."

"I know." She dabbed the gunk away from the corners of his eyes with a bit of clean cotton.

His face was a mess -- a red and oozing burn the size of the palm of her hand, crusted in bits of dying skin, covered one side of his face. He had black eyes, too -- he'd cracked the bridge of his nose at some point, though that was a minor injury compared to the others. Most of the burn was along his jaw and she was optimistic he might be able to hide the worst of the scars with a beard -- though Yukio with a beard was a funny thought.

Ken had a basin of water. She soaked the stuck bits of bandage off his face and he lay rigidly still as she worked. Then, since she was heavier than Yukio's cousin, she lay across his chest and pinned Yukio down with her weight. This was going to hurt, narcotics or not.

She had never needed to tell Ken that the wounds needed to be scrubbed, not dabbed at. Somehow, he'd picked up more than a bit of medical knowledge. She wondered where he'd learned so much. Well, he'd mentioned being in a war -- perhaps that was where he'd learned to debride a burn. She made a note to ask him, later.

Yukio screamed now. He thrashed in her grip, and howled with startling loudness in the close confines of the bedroom. With his mouth inches from her ear, his shouts of agony left her half deaf. She continued to hold him down, in a parody of an intimate embrace. It was necessary -- but God, it made her want to vomit when he cried out.

He swore, language she'd never heard from him -- he used words she had never expected to hear issued from his mouth. _Fuck _and _Goddamn it _and _bloody hell. _

Ken, working efficiently and swiftly, rubbed away at the dying, peeling skin with a wad of boiled gauze. Yukio tried to twist his face away, and Ken, without comment, gripped his head in one callused hand and held him still.

The face was the worst, though the burn on his shoulder was deeper and his hand was so badly mangled. His face _hurt _more -- the burn on the shoulder was so severe it had destroyed nerve endings, and they'd cut away most of the charred bits on his hand when they'd taken the remnants of his fingers.

There was no infection, at least so far. That was a blessing, though one she didn't expect to continue every effort at cleanliness. She hadn't said a word to Ken, but he also knew. She could see it in his eyes, when they were done torturing his cousin with their treatments.

After dropping a handful of bloody gauze back into the basin of water he said somewhat shortly, "I'll get some soup, he needs to eat," and he turned away from Yukio and walked out of the room.

He was having a much harder time with this than she was. Well, she was a doctor's daughter -- she'd been nursing wounded men since she was old enough to fetch and carry. And Ken might know a bit about medicine, but Yukio was his cousin. She had a certain degree of detachment -- there was a difference between _family _and _friend._

"C-can... something for the pain?" Yukio asked, quietly. His voice was hoarse. "I'm sorry to ... it hurts ... it hurts ..."

"I know it does." She sat down next to him. "Yukio, I don't know if you'll remember this later, but I want you to know I think you did a very brave thing, standing up to those policemen."

"Hurts," he complained.

"I know."

"I need ... it hurts, I need something ..."

"I know." She smoothed his undamaged hand. "But you need to eat. If we give you morphine now, you'll fall asleep. If you don't eat, you won't heal."

"_Hurts _..."

That was his world, right now. Pain. She was completely unsurprised that he was focused on one thing.

But then he surprised her. He reached a hand out -- the uninjured one. He reached for her with his left hand, and he was right-handed. She caught his fingers and grasped him, sensing what he wanted. He squeezed her fingers and whispered, "Will I be able to see okay again?"

He deserved an honest answer. She said, "I don't know."

"_Damn _it."

"Shh. Such language."

"Bloody damn fuck it." His voice was desperate. "I can't be blind. I can't. I can't."

"Yukio Himura," she said, tartly, "I expect an apology for that language. Also, you're not very good at swearing, are you?"

Silence. Then, he said, rather sincerely, "Sorry."

"If you're hurting, you can tell me. I don't need to listen to obscenities, however."

"I ... I'm so scared." His voice shook. She wondered if he was crying behind the bandages over his eyes. Her father had taught her to get patients to _talk_. Swearing accomplished nothing; demanding that they put their fears into real words helped them come to grips with their injuries.

"I know." She sat down on the chair beside his bed. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

"You won't go to the home?"

She'd actually forgotten about that. "No. I won't."

"Thanks."

She gripped his hand again. "Yukio, I'll stay with you. I promise."

"Thanks." He squeezed her fingers in response. Then he rolled his head back and forth. "... hurts."

-----------------

The pastor showed up the following day, while Kenshin had gone out to send a telegram to Jessica Marshall.

At the sound of the sharp knock, she looked out the upstairs window at the first knock to see a black buggy drawn by a fine bay mare; the mare had a white blaze that covered most of her face, blue eyes, and high white stockings on all four feet. She couldn't see the man himself, but she'd gotten a description of the pastor and his horse and buggy from the greengrocer.

She would have ignored him, but Yukio was asleep, and his banging on the downstairs door threatened to wake him. She finally rose, reluctantly, and went downstairs. The preacher banged on the door. Did he think she didn't hear him?

She yanked it open in mid-rap. "I'm not deaf, and we've a badly injured boy upstairs. You're going to wake him up."

She was cross. Yukio's helpless tears as they had cleaned his burns this morning had left her in a terrible mood. Worse, his shattered ankle was infected now. The doctor had shrugged and said there wasn't much they could do for him in a hospital that they couldn't do at home; she did, after all, have considerable medical training. He was running a fever and she knew it was only going to get worse. The _worst _was a possibility, and she didn't think she could bear one more loss in her life.

The man blinked at her.

She started to shut the door.

"Wait. Do you require assistance?" He sounded cultured -- and a Yankee, for sure.

"I need a miracle." She glared at him. He was a tall man, with a stiff and starched suit, and the obligatory cross hanging around his neck. He also had a bible in one hand, and what appeared to be religious pamphlets.

"I'm Michael McHenry." He held his fingers out for her, shifting the books into his other hand.

"And I'm quite extraordinarily busy." But she shook his hand out of politeness. "Look, I know why you're here. And you're not welcome. I'm doing fine for myself, and I'll be leaving San Francisco in a few weeks anyway."

"The police had quite a few dire accusations," the man said, eyes gravely concerned. "Prostitution among them. They say you are in a family way. Though I have learned to be skeptical of what those men tell me."

She snorted. Annoyed in general, she stated, "I was raped, he certainly didn't _pay _me. The father of my child is a neighbor in Arizona."

The preacher blushed from his receding hairline clear down to the starched collar of his shirt. However, his voice was level when he said, "Err. I'm sorry that happened to you. That is not what the police told me."

She didn't want his sympathy -- in truth, she didn't want _anyone_'s sympathy. Still annoyed, she snapped, "It's what I told the cops."

"Obviously, they did not accurately convey your words." To his credit, he sounded equally annoyed.

She felt herself softening a bit. He wasn't trying to physically snatch her off the stoop and drag her off wholesale to his shelter, so perhaps he could be reasoned with. She would try. She said in a slightly more polite tone, "Mr. McMichael, the fact is, Mr. Shin and Mr. Himura are friends. Good friends. I saved Mr. Himura's life several months ago. I'm _trying _to do it again. Then I am going to accompany Mr. Himura home to London where his family has estate and they have promised me employment upon arrival. His sister is one of the wealthiest women in England. I do _not _need your help."

The preacher was silent for a long moment. Then, to her surprise, he started laughing. It was a real, honestly, genuine chuckle. She blinked at him, trying to figure out what he found so funny.

"By your exasperation," he said, finally, "I would take it that you need a helping hand more than God's hand in your life."

She snorted. "I could use someone to do the laundry. If you're willing to wash sheets you can come in. Otherwise ..."

"Lead on," he said, looking somewhat bemused.

She stared at him. Ken -- Kenshin, she mentally corrected herself -- had been up all night keeping a vigil over Yukio. He had said he would do the laundry when he came back from sending the telegram, but he was exhausted. He might be Immortal, but he was still just a man and as far as she knew, his need for sleep was no different than anyone else's.

"You'll do the laundry." She stated this flatly, in disbelief.

"If that is what needs to be done. God's will works in mysterious ways. Sometimes, people need spiritual help. Sometimes, they just need a helping hand. In either case, I am doing His work."

Odds were, she decided, he was probably going to preach at her. Well, he could talk all he wanted so long as the laundry got done. She could always kick him out later if he annoyed her. She held the door open and said, grudgingly, "Come in. The washtub's in the basement if you want to drag it up the stairs, and there's a clothesline in the back yard."

_------------------_

When Kenshin stepped out of the garage after parking the Ford, he found a strange man in his back yard. The man had the washtub set up on the back porch and was scrubbing one of Kenshin's sleeping yukatas on a washboard -- it was his favorite bright purple one. Several sheets were already flying in the breeze on the clothesline.

Kenshin blinked. And stared.

The man looked up at him. He was tall, thin, and had stripped off a fine suit jacket. The jacket was draped over the back porch railing and the man's good dress shirt underneath was stained with sweat. It was a rare warm day in San Francisco.

"Hello," the man said, pleasantly, "you must be Ken Shin."

"Et-to ... yes, I am."

The man rose. Standing, he seemed even taller. Kenshin guessed he was significantly more than six feet tall. His fingers were very long as well, when he held them out to Kenshin to shake. "I'm Michael McHenry."

"Ah, hello." Kenshin stared up at him curiously.

"Your friend Melody needed some help, so I offered." The man's eyes were twinkling. "She assures me she doesn't need a bed in the girl's home I run, and I'm honestly relieved -- I have limited space, and many girls who need my help. She tells me you and your cousin have stepped up to help her. I'm impressed by anyone who would be so charitable."

"She's a friend," Kenshin said, simply. So this was the preacher? Well, if he was willing to do the laundry, he could preach all he wanted. Kenshin had likely heard worse from Mrs. Marshall. "Thank you, for helping."

"It is not a problem at all. I'll send one of the girls down tomorrow to help Melody too, and we'll all say a prayer for your cousin tonight."

"Thank you, for that, as well," Kenshin said, under the principal of, _a prayer can't hurt, anyway_. If the Christian God decided to help out, who was he to complain? _Sorry, Sir, wrong religion, we don't want your help, just let him die. _

Gods, he was in a black mood. He added, "I appreciate the assistance with the laundry."

_My laundry_, he thought, vaguely annoyed. He wouldn't tell this man that, of course -- he was being wonderfully and unexpectedly helpful. But doing the laundry was therapeutic; cleaning and organizing things brought a bit of normalcy to his life.

"You're welcome," the man said, cheerfully.

"Ahh ..."

"You want to check on your cousin. Go ahead. Don't mind me at all, I'm a helper, not a guest, today."

Kenshin bowed his head respectfully. "I thank you again, sir."

Upstairs, in the bedroom, Melody was sponging Yukio's forehead off. His son thrashed restlessly in the bed.

"He's really got a fever," Melody said, when she saw him, without any preamble. "I gave him some Aspirin to try to bring it down earlier but I'm afraid we may need to get him into an ice bath."

_Which is risky, _Kenshin knew. Soaking his son's wounds might increase the chance of infection, plus, he'd seen feverish men go into shock and die when suddenly immersed in cold water.

Still, the fever itself could kill.

"The doctor's supposed to come by in a bit," she added, "but you should probably go out and get some ice."

Kenshin nodded. He had a sudden terribly sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. This could end very badly indeed. He'd seen men die of far less grave injuries.

Yukio muttered something under his breath. Then, more clearly, he said, "... he what?"

"Delirious," Melody said, shaking her head.

"I'm _not _delirious," Yukio said, very clearly and coherently, "I can hear you. I'm not going to die, so stop worrying. And Father, Hiko says to tell you that you're still a little idiot."

Melody sighed. "He's been talking to this Hiko character for about a half an hour. He's delirious."

Kenshin pinched the bridge of his nose. Suddenly, he had a headache to go with his sick worry. "Hiko," he said, "there a preacher downstairs who I think maybe know how to do an exorcism."

Yukio's response was a minute in coming. He said, sounding amused, "Hiko reminds you that he doesn't speak English and that if you're going to threaten him, you should do it in proper Japanese."

Kenshin rested a hand on Yukio's forehead. His son was burning up -- scarily, painfully hot. He was amazed that Yukio was conscious, nevermind able to talk coherently. He said -- in Japanese, as requested, "Hiko, if you're here to take my boy away with you ..." He couldn't even form the words. He couldn't bring himself to beg, to cry. And he thought that it would make no difference, in the end.

"I'm not going anywhere," Yukio said, crossly. "And my head hurts. Can I have some water?"

-----------------


	86. Chapter 86

Melody checked the bags of icewater tucked into Yukio's armpits and in a bag on his head. It was still cold enough that condensation beaded on the rubber, but it was doing little to lower his raging fever.

The room smelled bad: of shit and vomit and decay. The later scent was coming from the wound on his leg -- a bullet wound that had shattered his ankle. The doctor had talked about getting a surgeon and amputating it that morning, several hours ago. Kenshin had argued strenuously against this -- he had shown them that there was still good blood flow to his son's toes, and he argued that the rot was localized and not creeping up his leg.

Telegrams had flown fast and furious between Japan and San Francisco. She was given to understand that Kenshin had worked in a clinic for a doctor, a long time ago. The doctor sent him recipes for medications. Another argument had followed; Kenshin had ended it by firing the Chinese doctor, and making his own salves and unguents. The doctor had wanted to use his own recipes, and Kenshin had been strongly critical of some of the ingredients.

Her father would have amputated. She agreed with the Chinese doctor that there was a very bad risk of blood poisoning from that wound. But Kenshin would not be swayed. She suspected the Chinese doctor was a decent physician, but Kenshin was desperate and trusted his friend in Japan -- and his own experience -- more.

Mixed in with the stench of corruption in the room there was the sweeter scent of honey, now. Kenshin had mixed the honey with a combination of molds and fungi and herbs, working from his friend's recipe. He had packed Yukio's wounds with the resulting sticky salve and bandaged everything with strips of cotton from clean, boiled sheets.

They were dosing him with morphine and aspirin for pain and fever, and between that and the fever, Yukio was delirious at best, and often lapsing into a comatose state. During rare lucid moments, she spooned broth into Yukio's mouth but it wasn't enough -- he was losing weight at a frightening pace. His cheekbones stood out in sharp relief, and when she changed the dressing on his shoulder she had noted that his wiry, hard muscles had been replaced by bone and tautly stretched skin in only days.

Kenshin sat in the window, watching her with flat, dispirited pale eyes. He looked frankly exhausted; she didn't think he'd slept in the week since Yukio had been injured.

Abruptly, there was a knock downstairs. Kenshin startled, jerking alert with a visible jolt. Yukio, on the bed, groaned and said something unintelligible.

"I'll answer it ..." she said, as Kenshin rolled to his feet.

"It's one like me," Kenshin stood up. "Stay here."

_One like him._

Immortal, he meant.

Kenshin swiftly left the room. She heard his bedroom door creak open and then click shut; she guessed he had retrieved his sword.

He had shown her the most remarkable thing -- he had slashed the palm of his hand nearly to the bone with the sharp edge of that bejeweled sword, much to her horror. She had been aghast, convinced he was insane.

Then he had told her a fantastical tale of Immortality, and his history. He was, he said, Yukio's father, and truthfully old enough to be his _grand_father. Ken Shin -- really Himura Kenshin -- was a man in his sixties, not a young man in his late teens or early twenties. He had been an assassin in a war decades ago, and, he claimed, fled Japan when too many people started asking questions and some got violent. A friend had died, he said, and his home burned.

She hadn't believed it.

She had thought that the disaster of Yukio's injuries had driven his cousin right around the bend. Ken had always struck her as remarkably stable and sane, if a bit goofy, but all men had limits. Perhaps his had been reached.

Ken's words had rang with truth, however. He had spoken calmly and confidently, without hesitation. His story had been consistent -- and when she'd tried to trip him up by asking questions and demanding details, he had never wavered in his story.

And then he'd shown her his hand. She had seen bone and tendon in that cut, when it was fresh, and there had been lots of blood. While speaking to her, he had kept a rag wrapped around it. And when he pulled the rag away, there was a healing scar -- red, angry looking, but appearing months old.

Perhaps his story was true.

There were stranger things in the world.

She would think about it later. She was too busy at the moment with real problems to worry about supernatural ones.

And she refused to be frightened of him. She liked him too much.

Kenshin was pretty sure who was at the door, but still, he shrugged a long overcoat on to hide his sword and then opened the door.

Andrew, dressed in a _gi _and sandals, stood there, as Kenshin had expected. Kenshin was learning that it was difficult, but not impossible, to tell the buzzes of other Immortals apart. In Andrew's case, he was weak and unfocused -- no swordsmen at all, by his aura.

The man looked a bit silly right now, Kenshin thought -- he had a bit of a pot belly and it pooched the _gi _out. His flabby arms were so pale they practically glowed. He was also shivering.

He wondered why Andrew was here. He also wondered why Andrew was wearing a _gi _outside on a day when the air temperature couldn't be above sixty-five degrees.!

"I'm here for lessons? With Yukio?" Andrew answered Kenshin's unspoken question. Kenshin realized he had been staring with some rudeness -- his brain didn't seem to be working all that well.

"No one told you?"

He'd informed Connor and the other Immortals of what had happened. Apparently, no one had seen fit to pass the word on to Andrew.

"Who? What?"

"My son was badly injured."

"Oh." Andrew stood in the doorway. "Um. I guess I should come back in a few days, then?"

Kenshin closed his eyes. _Maybe never_, he thought. Even if Yukio lived ... _maybe never_.

"When get well enough to travel, I send him home to England," Kenshin stated.

Andrew stared at him.

Kenshin clarified, "You need find another sensei. My son not teach you anymore."

Andrew's eyes widened. Then he stammered, "But, but ... people want to _kill _me. Take my head! You can't ... but ..."

"I suggest you find holy ground," Connor MacLeod's warm burr came from behind Andrew, as the man's buzz washed over both of them.

Andrew spun around, and reached beneath his coat for the sword he didn't really know how to use. Kenshin put a steadying hand on his arm. "Connor isn't going to hurt you in front of me, Andrew. Is that true, yes?"

Connor grunted. "Probably. Andrew, get lost. I need to talk to Ken."

Andrew beat a hasty retreat.

"You are very rude to him," Kenshin observed, arms folded and a stern glare on his face.

"He's an imbecile." Connor glanced after Andrew's retreating back. "A coward. I don't understand what you see in him."

"Not what he is today, but what he become someday, that I am interested in," Kenshin said, feeling somewhat like he wanted to smack Connor upside the head with Kaoru's bokken. He liked Connor, but also found the man to be a bit quick to judge, among many other flaws.

"What he will become? Shorter by a head," Connor snapped back, "in the near future."

"You _promised_." Kenshin said, with some irritation.

"Oh, I promised. But there's at least half a dozen Immortal in this city who knew his lady. It was an easy promise; somebody else will take care of the problem for me."

"And no proof that he kill her, not one person has." Kenshin unfolded his arms, and said, somewhat rudely, "What do you want, Connor?"

"I just wanted to see if you needed anything." Connor sounded hurt.

Kenshin sighed. He was being rude. However, he currently lacked the time and patience to play host to a guest, and he truly didn't need any help. "I thank you, for that. And no, not at the moment. I am much surprise by numbers of people who come to help. We are well fed and the house is spotless, and McHenry is in my back yard now doing my laundry. Again. I cannot think of much else that needs being done."

"Also, I want to warn you -- there's an Immortal in town, his name is Chen Lee. He's good, and he's hunting heads. You might watch yours."

Kenshin frowned. "I have no desire to hunt anyone."

"Well, Chen's not taking no for an answer. Honestly, you or I are going to need to take him out. He's better than about ninety-five percent of the Immortals out there. It'll take someone like us to stop him. You might be a better choice than I; he's hiding out in Chinatown and they may talk to you where they won't give me the time of day."

Kenshin didn't think that Connor was in the top five percent of swordsmen, but decided he wasn't feeling rude enough to state this. Also, he wasn't any more Chinese than Connor was. If anything, given the recent history between Japan and China, his nationality handicapped him in that regard. However, he simply replied, "I do not kill."

"Yeah, yeah," Connor shook his head. "You'll sing a different tune the first time you run into someone who's seriously bent on provoking you."

Kenshin quirked an eyebrow. "I have."

"You have sung a different tune?"

"No, I meet men determined to provoke me." He shrugged. His conscience was clean, here. "Most of them are still alive. One destroyed himself in his efforts to defeat me. None, I kill. Not since I made my vow have I kill. I won't, ever. Not ever. Not again."

Hopefully, that was clear enough.

Connor rolled his eyes in reaction. "Tell you what. I'll deal with Chen, if you'll spar with me a bit. You haven't been practicing with anyone that I've heard of, and we could both use the work, I'm sure."

Kenshin said, very firmly, "I do _not _wish practice with anyone."

"You've got to, to stay sharp." Connor shook his head. "What, are you afraid I'll beat you?"

Jibe aside, Connor had a point. And Kenshin did spar with others on occasion -- in England, it had been Kenji and Shinya, mostly, and sometimes the younger boys who he trained with. Here, in America, he had worked with Yukio occasionally, and had contemplated crossing steel with Hayato. He knew that would make the old man happy, and Hayato hadn't been entirely bad with a blade.

He did need the practice to stay sharp. He knew that. He had no desire to lose his edge and then lose his head because he wasn't staying fit.

Kenshin ignored Connor's sarcastic question while me mulled the man's request over. His reason for hesitation was simple: He had nothing to hide from the kids -- they could watch him do the katas of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu any time they wanted. None of them were likely to ever become swordsmen. By contrast, Connor could learn a great deal from watching Kenshin. And it was highly probable he would use that knowledge to his advantage. Though Kenshin didn't think he would ever need to fight Connor, Connor could use it against other Immortals.

_I swore that Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu would die with me. And when I broke that promise to myself, I came to regret it. I will not violate that vow again._

_But. _

_He's lived centuries because he's very good. Not the best, but good enough -- most swordsmen better than he are will also be like me, unlikely to pick a fight with anyone. It takes a certain amount of honor and integrity to reach the upper levels of skill with a sword. Will allowing him to see my style and learn from it change any outcomes when foolish men challenge Connor? The fools will die regardless._

"Very well," Kenshin said, "When Yukio is better, we will practice together."

"Thank you -- how is Yukio?" Connor's eyes were deeply concerned.

"Bad." Kenshin let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. "He has infections."

"Damn. He's a good kid."

"He is ..." Kenshin sighed. "He is the youngest."

Connor reached a hand out and squeezed Kenshin's shoulder. "If you need anything, let me know."

"Thank you," Kenshin said, and meant it.

* * *

The early autumn air was heavy with humidity and heat, in Kyoto. Kaoru wiped sweat from brow and then stiffly clambered to her feet from her position kneeling before her desk. Her knees hurt in this sort of weather -- in truth, everything hurt. If she admitted to the pain, however, Yahiko would tease her mercilessly about getting old.

There was a bit of truth in that, and Yahiko knew it. It bothered her. And that was _precisely _why Yahiko picked on her about it. Sometimes, she wanted to strangle him. Other times, she wanted to hug him and never let him go -- because soon enough, he wouldn't be around to torment her.

She had so much to do today. The house's floor needed scrubbing, and she wanted to empty out the tub in the bathhouse and clean that little room thoroughly. She had been right in thinking that Yahiko needed help -- he had seven daughters, but all of them had families of their own and little time for the hard labor of running a household.

"Obaachan?" A young voice said, behind her.

"Good morning Aki-kun," she said, turning to face the boy, who stood in the open shoji of her bedroom. He was ten -- and like his grandfather, he seemed a couple years younger than his real age.

Aki was _always _Aki-kun, to distinguish him from his "uncle" Aki who he had been named after. Kaoru had been very happy to learn just how close Aki had become with Yahiko's family. Not making Yahiko's adoption formal was something she had always regretted. But she had been sixteen, and he ten, when they had met. _Kenshin _could have adopted him -- but hadn't, for a multitude of reasons mostly having to do with an emotionally scarred rurouni who'd had tremendous amounts of personal healing to do before he could ever consider becoming a father.

_We've all come so far. Orphan. Street rat. Homeless wanderer. _

"D'you need anything from the market, Obaachan?" he said. "Mama said to come over and ask on my way. She wants tofu."

_Obaachan. _Granny. That, she didn't like much. But Yahiko's grandchildren had started calling her that, at his urging. Probably, Yahiko knew it secretly annoyed her. _Even if I have grandchildren in England, too -- and they call me Granny, somehow, hearing it in Japanese is different._

She realized she'd been silent for a bit too long when the kid said, "Obaachan?" in questioning tone of voice.

"I think your grandpa would like some fresh fruit." She fished some coins out from a desk drawer.

"Why are you so sad?"

Perceptive kid, she thought. She smiled weakly and said, "It is nothing. I am just worried about my son. He was hurt in an accident."

"Oh. I liked Yukio." Aki-kun scuffed the toe of his sandal on the ground and stared at his feet.

Mixed among the yen she had picked up, there were several copper pennies. She weighed them in her hand, then said, "Here, kiddo."

He blinked at the pennies. "For me?"

She ruffled his hair. "For you. There's enough yen there to get some candy, too. Buy some for yourself, and bring me and Yahiko back a couple of pieces."

He studied the American coins. "How much are these worth?"

"Not much," she said, "maybe enough to buy a novel, in America."

"Oh." He sounded disappointed.

"Baka." She swatted him affectionately. "I thought you just might like to have them."

"Oh." He put all the coins in the pocket of his trousers. "Okay, Obaachan. I'll see you later!"

After he was gone, Yahiko pushed aside the shoji leading into his room -- the bedrooms were connected, as this had been Tsubame's room. They had slept apart, because Tsubame had claimed Yahiko snored.

Tsubame had been right. Kaoru could hear him easily through the paper door at night. Sleeping in the same bedroom with him would have been pure torture.

Yukio said critically, "He's a lot like Aki. Always wanting to know what things are _worth_."

"Well," she said sensibly, "that would be his uncle Aki's influence. And that attitude has served Aki well."

"Aki is very ... businesslike."

She nodded. "He was nine when we adopted him, and a few years older when we moved from Britain. He went from absolutely nothing, to very little, and then to wealth beyond anything he'd ever imagined. Is it little wonder that my Aki is focused on making wealth for himself, now that he knows it is possible, and has been given the tools to do so?"

Yahiko snorted. "He has four of my daughters investing in a factory he wants to build. I hope they don't all lose their money."

She changed the subject. "How are you feeling?"

The look he gave her was sour. It didn't tell her much; the fact that he was up and about at all was a good sign, though. He'd spent most of the last week in bed. "Have you heard any word on Yukio?"

She shook her head. The last telegrams had arrived the night before; one for her, and one for Megumi. Hers had been cheerful and optimistic. Megumi's had been more telling -- Kenshin had asked Megumi for advice on treating some severe injuries. Broken bones, a gunshot wound, burns.

Megumi had shown her, and suggested she go home. _If he lives, he'll need you, _Megumi had said, with her characteristic bluntness.

_Yukio has Kenshin. Yahiko needs me. _

It hurt. It hurt beyond _belief. _But she figured if she went home, by the time the boat got there, Yukio would be on the road to recovery -- or it would be all over. The next boat wasn't leaving for a week, and then would take close to a month to make it to San Diego, and then a couple days ride up the coast. It wasn't going to San Francisco.

"Kenshin will take care of him. He's good at that." Yahiko put a hand on her shoulder. His gnarled fingers, worn and battered with scars from many years wielding a sword, squeezed once. "Kaoru, he's a tough kid. A fighter. I heard from Raeko about that spat he got in with those toughs. You two have raised him well, and he has the spirit to live."

She swallowed hard. She would not cry. Instead, she said shortly, "You hungry?"

"You cooking?" His words were teasing. He was definitely feeling good this morning.

"I think I can manage rice and some fish." She gave him a little shove -- once, it would have been a full-on smack.

"Burnt, too salty, and seasoned weirdly ..." he said, "Ah, brings back fond memories ..."

She raised her hand, seriously tempted to hit him anyway. Yahiko ducked back, laughing, his grin bearing a perfect row of even white teeth. He still looked _young_ somehow -- he might have grandchildren old enough to run errands on their own, but he looked like a boy himself. It was the light in his eyes, and the way he smiled. Yahiko would always have a bit of impish little boy in him.

But then he winced, as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He put a hand out, balancing himself against the wall, and coughed. For the last several weeks, he'd been hacking up blood -- she saw flecks of red on his lips, now.

He was too pale, all at once. Pain, she recognized, from his expression. Always pain. And he refused many of the pain-killing draughts that Megumi offered him, on the grounds that they fogged his head and made him dizzy and sick to his stomach.

"Go sit down," she said, roughly. "I'll get breakfast started."

"Oye, woman, you're trying to kill me before this disease does," he teased, but he hobbled to the front of the house and claimed the chair at the western-style table she'd brought in. He could not get up and down easily; his back and legs hurt too much.

She went to the kitchen to fix the promised meal.

Suddenly, Yahiko cried out, "Shinya!"

Laughter and happy noises of greeting came from the room. Kaoru ran out, in disbelief. It _was _Shinya -- and Byron and Kenji and Jessica, and all half dozen of her grandchildren from the oldest to the baby in Jessica's arms. Iku and her children were there as well, though she didn't see Iku's husband. She did spot a couple of Iku's younger sibling's children, however, a boy and girl who were both four -- apparently, Iku and Kenji had brought their nieces and nephews. And entering the door behind everyone was Aki, and his kids. The effect was like an invasion.

"Mother!" Iku and Kenji cried almost simultaneously. Kenji swept her off her feet and spun her around in a hug.

"You're here! I didn't know you'd be here!" He set her down when she protested his manhandling vigorously. "Is father here?"

"This is a surprise!" Shinya hugged her fiercely, diving in between Iku and Kenji. She was surprised to see that he had the sakabatou at his waist. "Kaoru, I was not expecting this. Is Kenshin here too?"

"No, Kenshin's not ..." she said, faintly. There were so many people in the room that there was barely space to breathe. The children were shouting, and there was laughter and noise -- a similar mob had formed around Yahiko. Shinya darted off back to his father as she watched.

Finally, the hubbub died down. Kenji told her, "The boat just got here an hour ago. When I heard about Tsubame, I figured it was time to bring everyone home for a visit. Particularly with Yahiko being so sick ..."

"Gods, it's good to see you." She hugged her son again, more dignified this time. "I wasn't sure when we ever would."

"Mother," he said, simply, "Megumi told us about Yukio. We stopped on the way over."

"I ..." she couldn't find words. She desperately wanted to be _there_, at his bedside.

"I'm your Uncle Yahiko," Yahiko was telling her grandchildren. Jessica had handed him the youngest -- the baby was staring suspiciously at Yahiko, hands braced against his shoulder. The child looked like he'd rather be _anywhere _but in Yahiko's arms. Yahiko, standing in a pool of light pouring through the open doorway, was smiling.

Byron brought a camera up to his face and snapped a picture.

The baby started wailing.

Kaoru teased, because it was a standing joke between them, "Yahiko, what are you doing to that kid?"

"Aw, he's too young to torment. I'll have to wait a few years." Yahiko handed the kid off to Byron, who rather expertly cradled the toddler -- Nicky was fourteen months -- against his shoulder. He was grinning, and looked suddenly healthy -- the unexpected visit was clearly good for him.

Nicky, rescued from Yahiko, immediately said, "Unc'By!" and started patting Byron's face.

Byron, grinning, said over the baby's head, "Ah, he'll get plenty of it from me."

"Isn't that the truth ..." Came from the oldest of the grandchildren, Emily, in lightly accented but understandable Japanese. Kenshin had made a real effort to ensure that all of the kids spoke at least _some _Japanese. Emily smacked her uncle with the back of one hand, making him dance backwards.

Byron, too, was having a good day. He was barely limping -- some days were good, some were bad for him. He looked like he was enjoying himself, today.

"I can't believe you're all _here_," Kaoru said, in disbelief.

Kenji sniffed suddenly. "Mother, do you smell that? Something's burning."

"Oh, crap! The breakfast!" She spun and ran for the kitchen. There was an explosion of laughter behind her.

Breakfast was a total loss. But she didn't really care -- it was a small price to pay to have so much of her family in one place.

_I was an orphan once, with no one. _She returned to the room. Things were settling down now. Yahiko had returned to his chair at the table, and the kids were seated on the floor around him. The adults were still talking excitedly, but at lower volumes. _Now I have such a wealth of family. _

And then Aki-kun entered with the promised fruits and sweets, and blinked at the crowd. "Who are all these people?"

Shinya turned at the voice. He dropped his hand to the hilt of the sword at his waist, and caressed it. A smile touched his lips. "Hey, kiddo. Don't you remember me?"

Aki-kun looked up. Kaoru thought that the boy had been three or four years younger when Shinya had last visited. Shinya hadn't changed much; his long ponytail had a few white hairs in it now, and that was about it. However, that was a long time for a little boy to remember an adult.

"You've got a sword!" Aki-kun said, excitement lighting his brown eyes.

"Aki," Yahiko said -- he never used the diminutive with his grandson, "this is Shinya, your uncle."

"Oh." Aki-kun stared up at him. "Oh, yeah. You played swords with me. When I was little."

"I think he's still pretty little," Byron said, sotto voice, and fortunately in English. Jessica swatted her brother-in-law upside the head with the back of her hand without even looking at him; Byron giggled.

"Go get your mother and your aunts," Yahiko said, making a shooing gesture. "We'll have a party. Get Megumi and Raeko, too."

"I'll get Raeko first!" The boy sounded excited by this prospect. He scampered off, grinning.

Yahiko said ruefully, "Poor Raeko. The kid's got a crush on her."

"Raeko doesn't like him?" Shinya said, curiously.

"He's ten and she's fourteen."

"Ah." Shinya smiled and said knowingly. "The allure of older women."

Yahiko glanced significantly at Byron, who was leaning on his cane next to Shinya. In a teasing tone of voice, he said, "I thought the allure for you was older men ..."

Byron choked and turned bright pink. Shinya just rolled his eyes and shook his head.

* * *

"I'll stay up and watch him tonight," Melody offered, to Kenshin.

She was worried about him -- Kenshin had huge dark circles under his eyes, and was saying very little. Yukio was no better, but neither was he worse -- and that lack of a downward turn might actually be good news. He was holding his own, at any rate.

Kenshin stared at her for a moment, then wordlessly nodded in agreement. He had not argued with her at all, and that alone worried her. He was hurting terribly, she thought; horrible guilt for what had happened to his son.

_It's because of me that he went out. _

Kenshin wasn't the only one who had things to be guilty for. She had thrown horrible, angry words at Yukio. He and his father had taken her in when it put them in an awkward situation and she had greedily demanded more of Yukio than just friendship. He wasn't willing or able to give more.

"Get me if you need anything." His lips thinned with a humorless smile that looked alien on his face. "I probably won't be asleep anyway."

It was quiet in the bedroom after he left. A clock ticked on the wall, loud in the absence of other sound. Yukio's breathing was steady; deep and relaxed.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and rested a hand on his forehead. It was dry and very hot; there was no change, there. She scooped a handful of ice from the bucket beside the bed and filled up a rubber bag with it, then rested it on his unbandaged forehead.

Restlessly, he tried to shove the bag away.

"Shhh."

He started shivering with chills, and muttered, "Melody, I feel so sick ..."

"Shhh, shhh. I know."

"I wanna sleep."

"Then go back to sleep." She brushed his tangled dark hair with her hand.

He was leaving the ice alone now, so she started to rise. Yukio grabbed at her wrist with his good hand, catching her by luck alone as his eyes were still bandaged. "Don't go."

"Okay." She remained seated. She'd get up after he fell asleep, she supposed.

"Can you ... can you hold me?" His voice was very tiny. "I'm so scared. I can't _see _anything."

She hesitated for a multitude of reasons. Then she nodded, though he couldn't see it, and slid under the covers and stretched out beside him. The jostling this caused made him wince, but when she awkwardly put an arm across his chest, he turned towards her.

And suddenly, it wasn't uncomfortable at all for her. It just felt _right _to hold on to him. He exhaled a long, slow, ragged breath and slid his good arm underneath her. They fit together like pieces of a puzzle -- she felt tension ease out of her shoulders that she didn't even know had been there. He clung to her, trembling with fever.

He didn't say a word. He just slowly relaxed, and after a moment, his shivering ceased. In moments, he was asleep again.

She'd planned to stay awake all night, to watch over him. However, she, too found herself drifting. Sleep claimed her despite her resolve, and it was deep and dreamless and _safe_.


	87. Chapter 87

"Kaoru," Shinya said, catching her on the way back from the market the next morning. She'd gone alone and had arranged delivery of enough food for a party, tomorrow. Today, the family was staying in a hotel -- there just wasn't enough room for all of them at the house. The bundle of food she had in her arms now was just for lunch for her and Yahiko.

She stopped, and smiled at him. "I cannot get over the fact that you're all _here_."

He nodded, and casually claimed the basket of vegetables and fish from her arms. "And we feel the same. We didn't know you were coming until we saw you."

He propped the basket on his shoulder and walked beside her. "Kenshin won't take the sakabatou back, will he?"

She shook her head. They'd had this discussion before, quite a few times. Yahiko had given the sakabatou to Shinya. Shinya had no desire to ever use it in a real fight. "He has one. It's a good blade. Your sword is your inheritance from your father."

"I might not be back in Japan for a long time." Shinya said softly, "and I'll have no children of my own."

"You're thinking of giving it to one of your nephews?"

"If Kenshin truly doesn't want it back."

"He doesn't. He has Iori's sword. That sword means a lot to him too." She smiled at Shinya. "Give yours to one of your nephews."

She ached to say, _Yes, I want Kenshin's sword back_, but it wasn't right. Kenshin had gifted that blade to Yahiko. It was only right that it be passed down through Yahiko's family.

Shinya nodded. "Though I had considered Raeko."

Kaoru quirked an eyebrow upward, considering that choice. Raeko wasn't a boy, or Shinya's blood relative, but Sanosuke had been a very large part of Shinya's childhood. "Sano would be pleased by that, I think."

Shinya said, sourly, "She didn't want it. Said she'd be likely to cut her own foot off. I'm a bit disappointed, actually." He sighed. "She also said I should give it to one of my nephews -- that she didn't want to create hard feelings with them."

Kaoru nodded. "Megumi says she has very few friends, but Yahiko has made sure she is treated as if she is a part of his family. She is wise to value that relationship over a sword. And there would be hard feelings if someone outside the family receoved the blade."

"Mm." Shinya nodded.

* * *

Kenshin woke when the sun through a window hit his eyes -- despite his words to Melody, he had fallen asleep. And quickly, too; he had been so exhausted that he had been unable to stay awake to brood.

Instinctively, he checked the _ki _of anyone close -- pure habit, that. There were two other people in the house; he sensed Melody and Yukio and they were both deeply asleep. Yawning, he sat up, and decided he would fix breakfast and then wake them.

On the way, he pushed Yukio's door to check on their state. Kenshin expected to find Melody asleep in the window seat and was surprised to find that she was curled up next to his son, an arm around Yukio's middle. She was snoring faintly, drooling a little, and twitching with a dream. He hoped it was a good dream; she was smiling.

Kenshin tiptoed closer. He should have disapproved, but Yukio was in the first deep, natural sleep he'd seen. And when he rested a hand on Yukio's forehead, he found that his son's fever had broken. He let out a breath he had not known he was holding, and let them sleep for awhile longer.

After breakfast, Kenshin sent Melody off to market for groceries. Yukio was sitting up and squinting at him from the bed -- it was the first day Yukio had seemed healthy enough to stay upright for more than a few minutes. Kenshin attributed this to several hours of deep, relaxed sleep.

"How's your vision?" Kenshin asked. Yukio was squinting and blinking, obviously troubled by the light.

"Blurry," Yukio said. He paused, then added, "Doesn't hurt as much. Feels like I have grit in my eyes.

"And the rest of you?"

"Burns _hurt_," Yukio growled, as if that should be self-evident -- and that was something Kenshin would candidly agree with. He'd been up close and personal with fire once, too. "Father ..."

His son trailed off.

Kenshin sat down on the edge of the bed, slowly, to avoid bouncing it. "Melody really cares about you, Yukio."

"She ..." Again with the silence. Then, suddenly, an angry explosion, "It's not fair!"

"A wise man once told me life wasn't fair."

"Heh. Hiko said that to me." Yukio started to fold his arms, winced, and settled for putting his hands in his lap. The mangled one was wrapped in so much gauze it looked like he was wearing a boxing glove.

Kenshin smirked, more convinced than ever that a certain old samurai had watched over his son through the worst of his illness. "Yes. He also used to tell me to chose my battles wisely, and make sure that the goal was worth the sacrifice. There is _always _sacrifice and unfairness in a fight, Yukio. But we fight for reasons. Is the reason worth the fight? Only you can decide -- that you can."

"You're talking about Melody."

"Yes," Kenshin said, simply. He paused, then added, "I like Melody a great deal. I ... _approve _... of her."

Yukio blinked at him, and started to say something, then hesitated. Finally, he came out with, "I like her too. But I'm not sure it's fair to her ..."

"Let her make that choice," Kenshin said, quietly. Then, impishly, he added, "She is quite attractive. You two would make a cute couple."

"Daaaad!"

Kenshin would have hassled Yukio a bit more -- because it was wonderful to see him not just coherent, but alert -- but at that moment, an Immortal buzz washed across his senses. Kenshin was instantly on the alert; behind that buzz there was a focused, dangerously aggressive and blatantly hostile _ki_. No friend, this.

Not wanting to worry his son, Kenshin calmly stood up. "If you don't mind, I'm going to go deal with something. I'll be back in a minute ..."

He grabbed his sakabatou on the way down the stairs. Just as he reached the landing, someone kicked the front door in, with enough force that the knob shattered the plaster wall behind it and splinters from the jamb sprayed everywhere. He heard Yukio's shout of alarm from upstairs but ignored it.

The man who stepped through the shattered doorway wasn't much taller than Kenshin. He was a compact swordsman, with hard muscles and glittering brown eyes. Kenshin's own eyes widened as he watched the man move -- he had the grace and poise of a tiger, and he held a well-used katana in one hand like it was an extension of his own arm.

_Trouble_, Kenshin thought, with an unaccustomed thrill of alarm. Lightly, he said, "The door wasn't locked. This one is not happy about the damage. This one finds that very rude, that he does."

That got him a grunt.

"You are Chen, yes? A friend warned me about you, that he did."

"Die," the man said, and launched himself forward.

_Gods_! Kenshin thought, in real alarm. He whipped his sword out and blocked the blow, but Chen was fast and nimble, and very skilled. It had been at least forty or fifty years since he'd been in a fight like this with anyone, and right from the get-go he knew he was in trouble. Their blades crashed together with such force that Kenshin was shoved backwards, staggering under an assault from a man with speed to match his, and forty or fifty pounds more weight behind his blows. Chen was a good bit more muscular and heavier.

He blocked and parried a rain of strikes that were as fast as his own God-like speed. Kenshin was shocked to find himself on the defensive, desperately trying not to be hurt or killed. And he was _angry _-- this attack was wholly unprovoked, the man had just kicked his way into Kenshin's home and was trying to kill him! No reason, no provocation, not even a _cause _-- just a desire to take Kenshin's head and steal his Quickening.

"There is no need for ..." Kenshin started to protest. Chen got a blow in that slipped past Kenshin's guard and sliced hotly through Kenshin's shirt and parted the skin beneath. "... fighting!" Kenshin concluded. Though he knew there _was -- _Chen wanted his Quickening, and the Prize, someday.

"Then stop," the other man said, with an evil smirk on his face. And again he rained a lightning-fast flurry of blows at Kenshin. Kenshin was hard pressed to defend himself. He found himself gasping for breath; it was taking every ounce of power and skill he had to keep his head attached to his shoulders.

__

Damn it, Connor won't stand a chance against this man!

Kenshin whirled away from Chen and got himself some room to work by bouncing off the wall and flipping over Chen's head -- he thanked everything holy for the room's high ceilings. With a heartbeat's time to spare, he snicked the sakabatou into its sheath and assumed the stance of battoujitsu.

Chen stopped short, clearly recognizing Kenshin's fighting style and not wanting to risk a lightning-fast blow.

Kenshin waited.

Chen reached into his jacket. A gun, Kenshin knew, before he even saw it. He leaped while Chen's hand was occupied, striking with a full-force battoujitsu blow the likes of which he had not dealt since the Revolution. Chen blocked it with his sword, and Kenshin's sakabatou -- reversed in the drawing -- cleaved through the lesser steel. The blow continued, through Chen's arm, and deep into his chest, nearly cutting him in two. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Kenshin flicked blood from his blade with an impatient, practiced gesture.

"Idiot," he said, regarding the corpse with considerable contempt. Chen was good with a blade, but not the smartest of fighters. He had allowed himself to be momentarily distracted by the drawing of a firearm. Kenshin toed the man's dismembered arm -- it was twitching.

"Father?" Yukio's voice came from halfway down the stairs. His son had somehow made it all the way out of the bedroom, down the hall, and down several steps. He was leaning against the wall, clearly reeling, and he was squinting at the growing pool of blood. In a tone of utter and abject disbelief, Yukio said, "You _killed _him."

Kenshin snorted. "I hardly think that that the spirit of my vow never to kill again applies when the man will rise from the dead in a few minutes. And sit down before you fall down; you don't need a tumble down the stairs on top of your other injuries."

"You cut his _arm _off." Yukio sounded more impressed than anything else.

Kenshin glanced down again. The fingers clenched into a fist, moving eerily on their own. Suddenly, he could smell the blood, and his heartbeat pounded loudly in his ears. He felt a little dizzy. His son was watching him, and that felt weirdly _unreal_. His life as a father, husband, businessman, a friend to many -- it felt as if the last decades had been an eerie dream.

_Screams_, loud in his memory; they were far more real than the life he was living. _Screams dying men. _And _the feel of steel in my hands ... cleaving through bone and guts._

__

Men just like this. Dying.

Chen was dead ... emphatically, distinctly _dead_. Kenshin could see loops of intestines and the rich red meat of his liver. He could smell the contents of his bowels, too, amidst the metal tang of blood.

_Screams_. There had been _screams_. And rain that fell as red as blood. And men who had died. It had felt like this. It had smelled like this. It had been all he had known. The last forty-five years had been but a dream, and if he stepped outside, blood would be raining from the sky and men would be dying in the streets.

The sakabatou clattered from nerveless hands. He fell to his knees, aware that he was behaving shamefully before his son, but unable to bring himself to focus. His hands were shaking and he couldn't stop _seeing _and viscerally _remembering _past fights.

* * *

Yukio was so dizzy he couldn't stand up without holding onto the wall, much less balance on one good leg and get down to his father. Kenshin was on his hands and knees on the floor, shaking, eyes rolling. It didn't take a cosmic genius to realize that his father was having a bad reaction to stopping the man. Grimly, Yukio recalled all the many times that Kenshin had waxed poetic about his distaste for killing.

"Hey, what happened here ..." It was Melody, arms full of bags of groceries. She stared over the top of a bunch of celery and the leafy tops of some carrots at the bloody scene.

"Melody!" Yukio said, "Go down in the basement and get some rope."

"Huh?" She stared stupidly at him. Well, he figured, it wasn't every day one came home to find a dead body and impressive amounts of blood on the floor.

"That man's like my father. Get rope!"

"He's really, really _dead_," she said, dubiously.

"It's temporary. Get rope!" He could _see _torn muscles and slashed innards beginning to knit together. The skin and flesh was _moving _as it healed. Apparently, Melody saw this too, because she stared at the corpse in abject disbelief for a long moment, then bolted for the basement door, which was located in the kitchen. Along the way, she dropped the groceries and scrambled around the corner into the kitchen so fast she slipped and nearly fell.

"Dad." Yukio called. "_Father_."

No response.

The dead man's legs twitched, and not in a _death throes _way. His rib cage moved. He coughed, and shuddered. That terrible rending gash that had exposed his innards was nearly gone now.

Yukio slid down to sit on the steps, intending to butt-scoot down the stairs. Maybe if he kicked the Immortal in the head really, really hard with his broken foot -- which was encased in a plaster cast -- he could delay him from coming around.

Kenshin slowly stood up. His eyes were vague -- but then they focused on Chen, who was definitely conscious now. Kenshin bent over, picked his sakabatou up, and stabbed Chen through the heart. The Immortal spasmed and then fell still again.

_Well,_ Yukio thought, _that works too. _

"Kenshin, here," Melody reappeared. She had found some cord in the basement.

Kenshin blinked at her. "Melody-dono?"

"Rope. To tie him with?"

"Oh." Kenshin stared at the body for a moment. "We can put him in the basement -- tie him to one of the support beams."

She bent over and grabbed Chen's ankles. Kenshin got the man's shoulders. They disappeared around the corner into the kitchen, and Yukio heard his father say, wryly, "Just let him go. He'll heal ..." Yukio heard a series of thumps and crashes.

"Oops," his father said, sounding a lot better than he had a minute ago. "That will hurt."

It was several minutes before they returned -- Kenshin was looking better, and Melody was giggling. She asked, "So what are you going to do when he wakes up?"

Kenshin said, with a brilliant smile that bared all his teeth, "Just have a little ... discussion ... with him."

"Ought to make him fix the door, too," Melody said, with a glower in the general direction of the captive in the basement. Then she turned her attention up towards Yukio and said, sternly, "What the _hell _are _you _doing _out of bed_?"

"I heard fighting ..."

"And what were you going to do, kick the bad guy with your cast?" She wasn't the slightest bit mollified. Yukio judged that it would not be a good idea to tell her that he'd been contemplating that. "Bed. _Now_. Or so help me, Yukio, I'll hit you over the head and drag you there myself."

He wasn't inclined to argue. The world was spinning around him. Adrenalin had canceled out the hurt a minute ago, but now, all his injuries were fiercely painful. Between it, and the stink in the room, he was starting to get nauseous.

She turned to face the parlor, and then scowled. Hands on her hips, and in an irritated tone of voice, she said, "What a bloody _mess_."

Kenshin started giggling. Yukio had never heard his father make quite that noise before. It was definitely a _giggle_. He wondered at his father's state of mind.

"What?" she said, crossly, turning that deadly expression on Kenshin. Yukio might be worried by Kenshin's reaction, but clearly, she was only annoyed. "There's crap on the floor and I think it came from his _insides_. It _smells_. I have _ick _on my skirts. "

Kenshin sobered. He took a deep breath and said, "I am sorry for this, Melody-dono. I'll help you mop after we get Yukio back to bed, that I will."

She regarded the floor thoughtfully. Chen's arm had finally stopped quivering. Very calmly, she said, "It appears Chen is already lending a hand."

It was pretty much at that moment that Yukio decided he was in love with the girl.


	88. Chapter 88

"Grandpa!" Aki-kun bolted into the room, clearly excited. "Grandpa, grandpa, look!"

Yahiko, who was seated in his chair by the window, jumped at the noise, and winced. He twisted awkwardly to face his grandson. Aki-kun had a sheathed katana in his hand.

"Look what Uncle Shinya gave me!"

"Ah." Yahiko smiled. He had been expecting this. The sword was nearly as tall as his grandson. "That's a very special sword. Did Shinya tell you about it?"

Aki-kun nodded. "It belonged to Himura Kenshin. He was the Battousai you've told us about lots of times. It was his special sword; he defeated Shishio Makoto with it."

"And Enishi, and a lot of other evil men." Yahiko held a hand out. Aki-kun reluctantly passed the blade to him. "It has a great deal of history attached to it, Aki, and it is very important. It is a deep honor for you to be given it."

He held the sword in his hand, feeling the heft and weight. It had once been as familiar to him as his own arm; he had carried that sword for far longer than Kenshin had. He'd practiced with this blade until the calluses on his hand had matched the worn spots on the hilt. He had born it with pride. Now, it felt as if it was twenty pounds heavier and awkward to wield.

Solemnly, Aki said, "It's worth a lot of money, isn't it?"

Yahiko blinked as he handed the sword back. "The value isn't in the _money_, Aki. It's in the history."

"But it's valuable."

"I guess so."

"Then I'll keep it safe forever!" The boy hugged the sword. Then he ran off, shouting, "Obaachan! Kaoru-Obaachan!"

Yahiko sighed. He was so _tired_. His whole body hurt. He wished he could feel better for the boy; he would have liked to have shown Aki how to _use _the sword. He'd taught Shinya everything he knew -- it was a shame he couldn't do the same for the next generation, too. He was very concerned that Aki-kun would never know what an honor it was to possess that blade. His grandson was the descendent of samurai; sometimes, he thought the boy had more in common with his namesake "uncle," Kenshin's businessman son than his own family.

He rose, with some effort. The pain in his hips and back was searing and made him lightheaded. With sheer force of will, he forced himself to take one step, then two, then move into a shambling walk. He followed the boy's shouts out into the courtyard, where Aki-kun had found Kaoru. Kaoru was showing the kid how to hold the sword.

__

I learned that when I was still a swaddling babe, Yahiko thought, wryly. He didn't remember _not _knowing how to hold a sword. He ached to take the blade into his own hands and show the child how it was done. To cleave apart a wooden post, to slice the air in a fierce dance of katas. He could hear the ringing of steel in his head as he envisioned practicing once again. He could still remember the sense of _rightness _that reaching for battle ki and focusing it at an enemy had brought to his soul.

Aki sheathed the sword, after a couple of minutes of instruction. Gravely, he said, "If it's worth so much, and it's so important, maybe I should put it away. I can always play with wooden swords."

Kaoru's eyes, when she looked over Aki-kun's head and met Yahiko's gaze, were a bit sad. "Maybe that's best, Aki-kun. You're a bit short to wield it yet, anyway."

Aki nodded. "I'm going to put it away where it's safe." He ran off, then, with a cheery wave.

"Play with wooden swords," Kaoru repeated, after the child was gone.

"Part of me is happy to hear him say that," Yahiko said, "That he considers it just _play _and not a way to make a living. All I ever knew was swordsmanship. And I thank you for everything you and Kenshin gave me -- but I wonder what my life would have been like without the wars, and the constant fighting. And the people I killed."

There had been three who had died at Yahiko's hand. He had worked as a bodyguard for the wealthy and powerful for decades. In that time, he had stopped several assassinations -- and three times, he had killed the assassin. Kenshin's sword might be blunt on its leading edge, but when swung with stopping force it could still end a life if it connected right. He was in awe of Kenshin's ability to _not _kill -- to judge exactly how hard to strike so that a life wasn't ended.

Yahiko knew of only one yakuza who had died later from Kenshin's blows, of an infection after Kenshin broken his leg -- and this was something nobody had ever told the rurouni. Yahiko fervently hoped no one ever did. Kaoru, Megumi, and Saito were the only ones left alive who might remember and they certainly were of mutual agreement in that respect. Telling Kenshin of that death was unnecessary and would only provoke angst and sorrow in the man's heart.

Otherwise, he had ended no lives in the entire time that Yahiko knew him.

On the other hand, Kenshin's skills there likely were at least partially related to Kenshin's experience in that regard. Kenshin had killed a _hell _of a lot more men than the three souls on Yahiko's conscience, during the Bakumatsu. And he'd seen men die, many times. He probably knew what it took to kill a lot better than Yahiko. And he had the experience to avoid blows with a high probability of death.

One of Yahiko's dead men had died after he'd bled out from a broken femur -- the skin hadn't been cut, but an internal artery had been severed and the man had been gone in moments. Megumi had explained later that was a very dangerous bone to break. The other two had died of head injuries, one immediately and the other after years of lingering.

"Mmm. I'm afraid this period of peace won't last, however." Kaoru met his eyes, drawing him back from dark memories of the past.

"Yes. There's a bad time coming." Yahiko felt tired again. "I won't be here, to help the family through it."

"You ..." Kaoru started to protest, to tell him he could still defeat this sickness and recover. He knew she wanted to believe that. They also both knew the truth. He glanced down at his hands -- skeletal thin. He'd been losing weight, lately, and his whole body _hurt_. His back was visibly twisted as the disease spread. And he was just so very tired.

When he glanced back up, his look quelled her defiant words. He was so _tired_ and he _knew _the truth in the very pain in his bones. He didn't have long.

She bowed her head. He saw tears glittering in her eyes. She said quietly, "Kenshin and I -- we'll look after them too. And help. Whenever we can."

"I know." He frowned at her. "Don't cry, Kaoru. You're ugly when you cry."

Her head came up, eyes blazing with sudden anger. He smirked at that expression. Decades after they had first met, and she was still as predictable as ever. That hot temper of hers was ridiculously easy to provoke.

She glowered at him, and raised a fist in a blow he knew she wouldn't actually deliver.

He stuck his tongue out. He couldn't help it. When she glared at him like that, it made him feel like he was ten years old again. This was a very good feeling.

Suddenly, she started giggling. "Gods, Yahiko, look at us."

He smiled. He'd made her laugh, which had been his goal. "Promise me you won't cry until I'm gone. I don't want to see it."

"You ..."

"_Promise_."

"Okay," she said, in a very small voice.

"Good. Will you fix lunch, then? I'm hungry enough to even eat _your _cooking."

"Oh, shut up, you," she said, and this time, she did swat him -- a gentle smack to the top of his head. Teasing her about her cooking was guaranteed to piss her of. He chuckled. She had the most remarkable ability to make him laugh and feel _human_ for a bit. And since the telegram that Yukio was doing much better, she'd been in a significantly and understandably better mood.

--

"I brought you some books."

Yukio blinked -- he had been staring into space, and wasn't even sure what he had been doing. Boredom was warring with discomfort for the most miserable part of his life, at the moment. With gratitude, he grinned. "Thanks!"

Melody set a stack of dime novels down on the bed beside him. They were obviously from the used-book store; the covers were dog-eared and worn. Not that he cared in the slightest -- it was something to do.

"How's your eyes?"

"Fine."

She reached to cup his chin in her hand, and he pulled away. Irritation flashed instantly to the forefront, startling him. It was the pain, he thought, making him so cranky -- he still wasn't getting much sleep, and Melody and his father refused to give him enough laudanum to do more than take the edge off. Aspirin didn't begin to lessen his agony. And he was so heartily sick of hurting.

"Hold still," she scolded, and reached again for him.

Didn't she know he just wanted to be left alone? He was so _tired _of being poked, prodded, and he had come to dread the horribly painful treatment of his burns and the still-festering wound in his ankle. He yanked his head back, and then hissed as the bones in his shattered collar bone shifted. "Leave me alone!"

"Yukio, I'm just trying to see how red your eyes are."

"They're _fine_." Suddenly, he was just _angry. _He was _fine_. She was being ... well, he didn't even have words for it. He was just furious. "Leave me the fuck alone!"

She recoiled. And blinked at him. Her expression was utterly dumbfounded.

And he felt terribly stupid, all at once. And that just made it worse. The embarrassment again transmuted into rage. "Get out! Leave me alone! I'm sick of you fucking fussing over me!"

She stared at him. Said, "You're _welcome._" And walked out.

He grabbed the books off the bed and threw them against the wall, one after another. Smack! Flutter. Smack! Flutter. He had to do it left handed because there wasn't much left of his right hand, and that made him angrier, because it was awkward. When he ran out of books he snagged a glass off the dresser by the bed and chucked it at the doorway -- Melody had left the door open.

Kenshin, in a burst of impossible speed, appeared in the hallway and neatly caught the glass before it could smash into the wall. His father stared at him, amethyst eyes very wide. "Yukio!"

"Leave me alone! Leave me the hell alone!"

"That will leave you minus an audience for this tantrum," Kenshin observed. He turned around and left without another word.

Tantrums without an audience were no fun at all. Kenshin's reaction to him throwing a fit when he was little had been about the same -- Kenshin had frequently told him he could scream all he wanted, but he couldn't do it where anyone could hear, and had sent him to his third-floor bedroom.

"It's not a tantrum!" he screamed after Kenshin. And then broke down into tears. He didn't even really know why he was crying, either.

--

Yukio was still crying when Melody returned with lunch. He lay in the bed, staring up at the ceiling, but when she stepped into the room he frantically sat up and scrubbed at his eyes. He didn't want to look like a baby in front of her.

"Hey."

"Hey," he said. He hoped she didn't notice his red eyes, or if she did, she attributed them to the burnt corneas. His eyes were mostly healed, though things still remained slightly blurry. She'd said something about needing glasses and he just didn't want to hear that.

"Soup and bread. I just baked the bread this morning." She set the tray down on the bed beside him. "Do you need help?"

He moved his right hand, reaching for the bowl -- and then saw his bandaged, burnt, mangled fingers and yanked them back. Likely, his shoulder had hurt as well with that movement. "I'm not hungry."

"Yes, you are," she said, pulling a chair up. "You need to use your left hand."

"Fuck." He said, then shook his head, "Sorry. I don't know why I keep swearing."

"I'd appreciate if you stopped," she said, with icy calm, "it's unpleasant to listen to."

"F..." He bit his lip and looked away. When she took that specific tone with him, it was scary.

"You okay?"

"I'm FINE!" The words exploded out of him with considerable force of emotion.

"Okay, then." She rocked back in the chair.

He grabbed for the soup, spilled half of it, and then shoved the remaining soup, tray and bread onto the floor. Melody blinked and moved her feet so they wouldn't get soaked by the spreading pool of chicken broth. With a dry, uninflected tone that made him want to rage at her more, she said, "I take it soup was a messy idea."

"Just leave me alone!" He screamed. It shocked him. He was being rude to her -- awful to her -- and that made him madder at himself.

"Okay." She picked the bowl and tray up and left.

"Come back!" He screamed.

She didn't.

--

Chen was silent. His dark eyes glittered at Kenshin, speaking volumes even if Chen himself was saying very little. The man sat crosslegged on the damp basement floor, and his expression indicated he was waiting for an execution. Kenshin had chained him by an ankle to the house's foundation, using a handcuff link -- the rope had only been a temporary measure.

Kenshin stood on the steps, unsure what to say to this man. He had no desire to be a jailer. Finally, he started this conversation with a very blunt, "Melody wants to know what we should do with your arm."

"Melody."

"My friend." Kenshin smiled at Chen. Personally, he would have just buried the arm in the garden, and been done with it, but Melody had insisted that they should ask Chen what his preferences were. It was, after all, his arm.

"She wants to know what to do with my arm." The man's English had no specific accent that Kenshin could identify -- not that Kenshin was very good at North American accents. He repeated Kenshin's words with strong skepticism. "And the rest of me? Should I give instructions on the disposition of the rest of my remains?"

"I had not planned to kill you."

"Oh. I had assumed you would do it tonight, away from your house." Chen narrowed his eyes. "It would be best if you did. You're strong and honorable. Better you get my Quickening than the first idiot with a sword who finds me, unable to defend myself."

Kenshin said quietly, "I will not kill."

"It's all part of the Game."

"This one does not play the Game." Kenshin wanted to scream those words in frustration, but he kept his tone level. "If I let you go, will you swear not to retaliate against people this one loves?"

"You would let me go."

Kenshin shrugged. "This one has enough skeletons in his closet, and does not need an Immortal in his basement."

Chen was silent in reaction to this attempt at levity. For a moment, Kenshin thought he wasn't going to answer. Then, softly, he said, "I've never involved mortals in the Game. I play by the rules."

"Good." Kenshin fished the handcuff key out of his pocket and released Chen. "You may go."

Chen rose and cupped a hand under the stump of what was left of his arm. Kenshin's blow had taken it off between the elbow and the shoulder; already, it was healed. "Where? Someone will find me and kill me."

Kenshin thought, _he should have thought about that before picking a fight with me. _He said, "I can send you away, if you'd like. My daughter in law owns a shipping firm. We can put you on a ship and drop you off somewhere without other Immortals."

"_Why _would you do that?" Chen stared at him. "I would have taken your head without a second thought."

"This one does not play the Game." Kenshin turned around and headed up the stairs. Halfway up, he paused, then said, "You can stay here until the next ship departs. It's a week or so."

"I could kill you in your sleep."

"That won't regrow your arm, however, and may leave my family less inclined to help you." Kenshin scratched his jaw. "And anyway, why would you kill a man who just spared your life?"

Chen snorted. But he followed Kenshin up the steps. He said, "I'm not going to stay here. But we will talk, tomorrow."

Melody looked over from mixing some sort of dough in a bowl when they appeared at the top of the stairs, and her eyes widened in recognition at the sight of Chen. Then they narrowed. She said shortly, "Your arm's in the icebox if you want it. Otherwise, I'll bury it."

Chen said, in a startled tone of voice, "The icebox?"

"I didn't want it to start stinking."

Kenshin grinned. He had gone from dismay at Yukio's interest in Melody, to friendly feelings towards the girl and concern for both of them, to outright affection for her. Now, he decided he _wanted _her as a daughter-in-law. He truly did like her.

"Remind me not to eat anything she cooks," Chen said. He opened the icebox, retrieved a long, paper-wrapped bundle that had fingers sticking out of one end, and walked out the door. Kenshin wondered what he planned to do with the arm. It wasn't like it could be reattached.

Melody looked at Kenshin. Kenshin looked back at her. She repeated, "I didn't want it to stink."

Kenshin scratched his jaw. Well, she had wrapped it up in butcher paper so it wouldn't leak on anything. He supposed there was no harm done to the icebox.

"My father kept a pickled baby in a jar on his desk."

Kenshin didn't say a word. He wasn't sure what sort of response that called for, really. Her father was a physician, so he figured there was more to the story ... maybe. Then, before he could figure out some sort of reaction to that news, the preacher knocked on the frame of the kitchen door. "Heylo!"

"Hey, Mr. McHenry," Melody said, looking up.

"Some guy just walked by carrying an arm." McHenry looked behind him, over his shoulders. He sounded shocked.

"That was Chen," Kenshin said. "We know him."

"Do I want to know about the arm?"

"No," Kenshin said, then because it seemed called for, he added, "Though nobody died. The arm is his."

"Well, I figured it was his, given he only has one. Unless he had a Frankenstein project in mind." McHenry scratched his head with his long fingers. Melody glanced up from mixing her dough and said, "You've got something on your wrist."

"Huh?" He glanced at his arm. The motion had caused his sleeve to fall back, revealing a tattoo. "Oh, that. A leftover from my misbegotten days as a sailor."

"Yeah," another voice said, and a strange girl appeared behind him. She was young, skinny, and wearing a worn cotton dress and old boots. Kenshin guessed she was one of the strays that McHenry had alluded to helping. "Mickey used to be a real roustabout before he found God."

Kenshin and Melody exchanged a quick look; Kenshin thought Melody rolled her eyes just the tiniest bit. Melody's opinion of in-your-face religion wasn't much higher than Kenshin's.

"God was never lost for me to 'find'," McHenry corrected her gently, "I just stopped listening to him for a bit. But that's not why I'm here today. We're just stopping by to see if you two need any help."

"Laundry's already done, and we mopped the floor last night," Melody said, making Kenshin nearly bite his tongue -- they'd done more than mop it, some serious scrubbing had been involved, "but if you wanted to go get some groceries, I'm sure we could use that help."

Kenshin nodded. "I'll get some money ..."

At that instant, lightning arced across the sky outside. A shattering boom followed. And then every lightbulb in the room exploded. The sink faucet burst, and water sprayed forth. The glass in the windows shattered.

Melody and McHenry's girl both screamed. Kenshin couldn't help but jump; his hand dropped to his nonexistent sword -- it was upstairs under his bed. McHenry swore a very un-preacher-like oath; yep, Kenshin thought, he had been a sailor.

"Stay here!" Kenshin shouted, bolting for the stairs. It was too late -- far too late -- but he wanted to know _who _had just died, and who had taken a head. That this was a Quickening was a forgone conclusion. Outside, he could see flickering light, brighter than daylight.

He grabbed the sword and his overcoat, shouted at Yukio to stay put, and galloped back down the stairs. McHenry was blocking the doorway and in a fierce argument with Melody.

"STAY HERE!"

"Let me past, you great big ... oof!"

McHenry physically picked her up and moved her aside as Kenshin ran for the door. Then he continued to hold her.

"Put me down!" Melody's voice was hitting a near-hysterical note. "Let go of me! Let go of me!"

The other girl stood with her hands over her mouth.

Kenshin said shortly, to McHenry, "Keep her here."

Now was _not _the time to be nice to little girls who wanted to get involved in dangerous messes. _Why is it, _Kenshin thought, as he ran down the sidewalk, _that every woman in my life is so inclined to _argue_?_

The Quickening had come from an alley one street over. He felt a buzz as he approached, but the owner retreated. Chen lay dead in the alley, head lopped off. It was staring at Kenshin from the gutter. His severed arm was on the ground beside him. The damned thing was twitching again as it was energized by the power of the Quickening.

Kenshin said a very, very bad word.

Melody ran up beside him. Took one look. Said, "Damn."

"Sorry!" McHenry appeared behind her. He was shaking his hand, which had bite marks on it. "She got loose."

"It's okay," Kenshin said to McHenry. Then he rounded on her. "Melody, when I say stay out of something, stay _out _of it."

She blinked at him. Kenshin glowered at her. She could have found herself smack in the middle of a second fight if he'd caught the other Immortal. He had _no _desire to see another girl laid open by accident ever again in his life. Bad enough that Kaoru had a tendency to chase him into battle; Kaoru knew all about swords and swordfights, and how and when to get out of the way of trouble. And when not to distract him. Melody had zero experience..

McHenry said, "He only had one arm. He was harmless."

"Did you say harmless or armless?" Melody said, with a bit of a snicker.

Kenshin gave her a dour look. He was not amused by her gallos humor about the death of a man who he might have someday called a friend -- it would not have been the first time he had turned an honest enemy into an ally.

"Sorry. Would you prefer I run away screaming 'eek, dead guy?'" She took a couple steps towards the head laying in a rivulet of water.

"Careful," McHenry said, grabbing her arm. Electricity arced from the corpse and sizzled across the ground. The Quickening wasn't quite over. McHenry paused a beat then said, "What! Was! That!"

Kenshin gave him a startled look. There was deceit in his words -- the man was an awful actor but Kenshin could also sense dishonesty in the man's _ki_. He had been spectacularly unsurprised by the energy. Kenshin said, "Come, we should go before police arrive."


	89. Chapter 89

Author's notes: This was a very difficult chapter to write. I apologize for the delay. However, I found myself taking it apart and rewriting it a dozen times. I'm still not happy with it, and I'm not sure I ever will be, but I need to move on with the story. So, I'm posting the version I'm most satisfied with, little as that is.

--

Kenshin's buzz gave Connor very little warning of the little Immortal's arrival -- Kenshin was moving quickly. Connor barely had time to set down the antique chain mail he was mending before Kenshin swiftly stepped through the door to his shop. The man's violet eyes were glittering and he had a smear of brown on one cheek. Connor stared at him for a moment, wondering if that marking was dirt or dried blood.

"Did you kill him?" Kenshin demanded, without greeting or any sort of polite discourse. Connor had spent enough time in Japan, and around Japanese natives, to know just _how _rude Kenshin was being. The man had a pretty good mad going, if he was being this brusque.

There wasn't the slightest trace of the affable, sometimes downright silly, man that Connor had grown fond of over the last few months. Kenshin was giving off rather menacing vibes.

"Define 'him' and I can give you a better answer to that." He figured someone had finally whacked Andrew. And about time. He didn't know what Kenshin saw in the man.

"Chen Lee."

"Oh." That was good news. He grinned in relief. Kenshin might be pissed -- and likely Kenshin was pissed because he was a goody-two-shoes -- but Connor was frankly delighted. "No, but if he's dead, I'm not complaining."

That earned him a sour look, though a bit of the vibrating anger left Kenshin's thin frame. With very terse words, Kenshin explained, "Chen try to kill me. I cut off his sword arm in the fight. Someone then kill him in the alley behind my house. He did not have a sword, either." Kenshin vented an exasperated hiss, _kussuuu_, that whistled between his teeth. Connor recognized it for the Japanese equivalent to a choice obscenity that it was. The Japanese didn't have swear words per se, but oh! the intent could be the same.

Kenshin continued in English. "I did not think it was you, but I like to know who."

"Awful lot of people would be out for Chen's head." Connor shrugged. "If you, ah, disarmed him ..."

Kenshin's eyes narrowed in disapproval, an expression which Connor chose to ignore.

"... his lifespan was certainly measured in hours. He was one heck of a powerful Immortal. Quite honestly, if you were going to cripple him, you should have simply taken his head yourself. I'd rather see someone like you -- a good guy -- get his quickening than a bad guy take it." And that was problematic. Connor desperately wanted to know which of his friends, allies, or enemies had just gotten a significant boost to their skills. "You have no idea who?"

"_You _were hunting him," Kenshin pointed out. His eyes were still hard and suspicious. "By your logic, you'd have taken his head if you'd found him."

Connor frowned. The thought of killing an, ah, unarmed man, even an evil Immortal, was unpalatable at best. He would do it if necessary, but probably not in cold blood. He hedged. "It would depend on the circumstances."

Kenshin blinked at him. Then he sighed, and his expression softened. "I'm sorry I misjudged you. You have honor."

Well, yeah. Connor thought that was self-evident. Otherwise, there would be far fewer Immortals in the city, given that Kenshin was about the only one who would be able to match him in a fight. Though depending on who took Chen's head, there might now be two equals to Connor's own skill -- and he would dearly love to know who that third powerful Immortal was.

"Depending on who took his head, we may have trouble." Connor massaged the bridge of his nose. Kenshin had brought him a bit of a headache. "I'll ask around and see if I can figure it out."

"Thank you. I, too, will do some ... asking."

"How's your son, by the way?"

"He heals." Kenshin looked troubled. "He throws tantrums. Yukio my most even-tempered child. Now, he screams, he cries. Not like him."

"You said he was knocked out."

"He had severe concussion." Kenshin's violet eyes were deeply concerned when they met Connor's gaze. Connor mentally winced. Old soldier that Kenshin was, he certainly knew -- and had seen -- men who'd had their brains rattled around the insides of their skulls before. Sometimes, they were never the same.

Kenshin changed the subject abruptly. "I apologize for thinking you kill Chen, and for barging so rudely."

Connor waved concern away with a loose gesture of one hand. "Not a problem. Quite honestly, I'd suspect me too."

Kenshin nodded. "Still, I was rude. I was ... disappointed, and wrongly so."

"Not a problem." Given that half of Connor's friends would react to being disappointed by another Immortal by lopping said Immortal's head off, Connor figured Kenshin was actually remarkably civilized. Of course, his standards of polite behavior tended to be a lot looser when it came to other Immortal.

__

Half of us are stark raving nuts, and even the sane ones might kill you for your head ... yes, by comparison, Kenshin's a paragon of diplomacy today.

Kenshin nodded gravely. "You are a good man. -- I have another question for you. What do you know of Michael McHenry."

"Who?" The name didn't ring a bell.

"Runs home for Wayward Girls." Kenshin seemed uneasy. "He's a religious man. A preacher. Methodist. I like him ..."

"... didn't know you were the religious sort, Ken."

Kenshin gave Connor one of those patented dirty looks. "One does not have to share another's religion to be friends."

"That's right -- you're buddy-buddy with Darius, too."

Kenshin nodded gravely. "I question McHenry, however, because he _knows _about us."

"Oh? Not the first mortal to find out about us, by a long shot." Connor shrugged.

"Yes," Kenshin said patiently, "but he not tell me he know."

"Oh?"

"He ... saw Chen's Quickening. And fake surprised."

"Does he know _you _are Immortal? Perhaps he was playing stupid for your benefit." Connor's brows furrowed as he considered the issue. "You know, he knows what Immortals are, but he's not saying anything because he thinks you're mortal."

Kenshin tilted his head sideways, clearly considering the idea. He confessed, finally, "That is a possibility. I talk to him."

Connor smirked. "Can I watch?"

"Oro?"

Connor shook his head, amused. Kenshin could go from deadly serious to painfully silly in two seconds flat. He said, "Don't mind me, Ken."

--

Melody laced her fingers together across her flat stomach, girlishly slender, and contemplated the fact that she was carrying a child within her. It was two AM, and the house's back garden was pitch dark. Crickets chirped. She was two months along now -- two cycles missed, two months of nausea and heartburn and other vague symptoms. Two months of _life_ within her.

_Ah, child, _she thought, at the life within her, _you and I, we just have each other._

She wondered how long until she felt the first quickening of movement, until her girth would thicken and her breasts begin to swell. _In a several months, _she thought, sardonically, as she glanced down at her admittedly flat chest, _I'll be a human cow. Moo._

She poked at her bosom with one finger, wondering what it would be like to hold a baby to her breast and be able to feed it with milk her own body made. It was a very odd concept ... but the thought of holding that infant close, curled around him in a chair -- that was rather appealing. She yearned for that, to give her love and care to another life. A baby. _Her _baby.

__

The only good thing that came out of that idiot in Arizona.

She supposed a lot of women would associate the baby with the rape, and want to rid themselves of the child or give it up for adoption. She understood those feelings -- she was currently standing on the back porch because a nightmare had woken her.

__

Wasn't my choice. Wasn't my fault. And it's neither the baby's choice nor fault either. He is the only family I have. I want him.

The door clicked open behind her. She turned, surprised. Ken stood there, dressed in a sleeping yukata, long hair roughly tied back in a way that seemed to indicate to her that he'd done it without looking in a mirror, and half asleep. She grimaced. "Did I wake you?"

She had been soundless, slipping down the stairs without an audible footstep or squeak of a floorboard. However, Kenshin had those strange and uncanny abilities to sense what people were doing around him.

He shook his head. "Bad dreams woke me."

"Mine or yours?" She teased.

He shot her a startled look, eyes widening. Then he relaxed, and shook his head. "My ... abilities ... are not that keen. I do not see your dreams. I may sense if you are very upset, but no detail. I dream of bad things in my own past."

He hesitated then added, "A moment. I will be back."

She waited. He went inside and she heard the gas stove light and the sink run.. Ten minutes later, he came back out with two steaming mugs of tea. He offered her one -- hers had milk and honey in it. His was plain, she knew. He'd recently started drinking his coffee black too; he had grumbled about gaining weight.

He asked in a soft, concerned voice, "You have nightmares of what happened to you?"

She nodded. She suddenly didn't trust herself to speak. Her voice might quaver.

He sat down on the steps and cupped his mug of tea in his hands. She expected platitudes from him, but he simply said, "You always will. But eventually they will come fewer and farther between."

She joined him. "I just have to go on with my life. Whatever it may hold."

"Aa." Kenshin glanced over at her. "That a very wise philosophy. Just _go on_." He paused, then added, "What happen to you ... has a way of destroying one's trust in others."

She snorted. "Well, I certainly don't trust that boy anymore. But for every evil person in the world, there's one like you and your son."

"The trick is tell them apart." Kenshin gave her a long, sideways look. "And to believe that what just say is true, here. In your heart." He tapped his chest with a callused index finger. "Easy say. Not so easy, believe. Sometimes."

She sighed. "I trust you. I trust your son. Everyone else ..." She trailed off. The thought of going away to live with the preacher, no matter how well meaning he was, left her cold. "I don't ... people scare me. It's why I came to you two. Both of you are so _safe_."

"Good you admit are hurt, here." Again, he touched his own chest with his finger, indicating his heart. "You heal, someday, because you admit you're hurt."

He paused, then added, "It's okay to be scared."

"You talk like you know about being scared."

Perhaps it was the hour, or the intimacy of sitting together in the dark, sipping tea. Perhaps it was the fact that talking to someone else chased his own nightmares away. Whatever the reason, Kenshin simply nodded and then he started to talk.

"It is hard," he said, quietly, "sometimes. To live with it. With the things I've done. And the mistakes I make. Letting Yukio pursue the police -- a mistake. Not the first one in my life. Probably not the last." He shook his head, making his dark bangs swish across his eyes. "Being Immortal means you have a longer lifetime to make terrible mistakes."

She started to say something sympathetic. He held up a hand, quieting her. "You say, _anyone can make a mistake_. I see it, in your eyes. But that doesn't change a mistake was made. I should have been sterner. I should have said no. Instead, I give my son the freedom I would have wanted, and he was hurt because of it."

Kenshin dashed his tea into the gravel. "I was eight, or about that, when my parents died. I was on my own, mostly, after that. I had a teacher, but he was not a _parent_. And he was very good at inspire me to rebel. We ... clashed. Hiko was very, very strict. He wouldn't _listen _to me. He had no respect for me. And so I would defy him. Not good." Kenshin turned the empty teacup around in his hand, callused fingertips at odds with the nice china. "I was stubborn child. Defiant. Eventually, I think I know more than my _shishou _and I leave."

He stared into the empty teacup. "I was thirteen, maybe fourteen. On my own. Making my own decisions. Some of them weren't very good." He was still for a moment, with the cup motionless between his fingers. Then he said, in a very soft voice, "Sometimes I think, if I had a mother, a father, to tell me _no_, to tell me I _overreach_, that I am a _fool_, I ... would have been different. I would be a farmer's son."

"Well, except for the whole Immortal business. Without your master to teach you swordsmanship, you would be dead now."

"Perhaps. He was very good at teaching swordsmanship." Kenshin nodded agreement. Then he set the teacup down beside him on the steps, very precisely. "Things happen for a reason. Still, I let Yukio fight the police because I do not want to be Hiko. I should have been his father, instead. And said no as a father."

"He'll be okay."

Kenshin sighed. He stared up at the dark sky. There was a marine layer, which meant no stars. She missed stars. She couldn't even see a moon tonight. Quietly, he said, "I hope."

She ran a hand over the flatness of her stomach. "I'm scared I'll make mistakes too. With my baby. I don't know _anything _about babies. Or children. I don't have any siblings, Mr. Himura; we moved so much I never got to know women with children. I can treat them when they get sick, but I don't _know _them. I don't know what to do."

Kenshin snorted. "You _will _make mistakes."

"That's comforting."

"Your baby will be fine. Babies tough. Babies _easy_. Feed them, clean them, love them. _Easy_." Kenshin made a vague gesture in the air with his hand. "It's when they start walk, talk, argue, that they get hard."

"That's even more comforting." She tried to picture a little person that _she _had brought into the world growing up -- walking around, talking to people, and perhaps disagreeing with her. It was a dizzying, impossible concept. A baby in her arms, she could fathom. But that baby growing up? Becoming a child, and then a young man or woman, and then an adult someday that she had formed and molded?

Impossible.

Kenshin sighed. "Children _hard_."

They sat in comfortable silence, after that. Kenshin was one of those rare people who didn't fill a conversation with chatter if there was nothing to say. It was good just to sit on the porch, _not alone_, with a a friend.

--

Yahiko's sons-in-law had built a platform for his futon. It was too hard for him to get up and down when his futon was on the floor. He sat on it now, bare back exposed, as Megumi probed at his spine.

He winced repeatedly and said in irritation, "It hasn't changed since the last time you saw me, Megumi-san."

She sighed, and shook her head. Kaoru, watching over Megumi's shoulder, wanted to cry. She was silent, wringing her hands, as Megumi examined Yahiko.

Megumi worked her thumbs into his back. "If you'd relax, nimwit, I might be able to get some of these muscles to release and you'd hurt less."

"What muscles?" Yahiko said, with a bitter laugh.

Kaoru winced at that comment. He was so _thin_. It was terrible to see. He had no muscles left -- just skin stretched taut over knobby joints. His back was twisted and humped from the disease, and she could see every deformed line of bone.. He was shivering, gooseflesh standing out on his arms.

"I can't relax. It _hurts_."

Megumi sighed, and stepped back. "I'm upping your dose of pain medication, Yahiko. You need it."

"It makes me foggy headed." He yanked his yukata up his arms and glowered at her.

"The pain needs to be treated. You'll do better if you're not stressed from hurting all the time. That depresses your immune system."

He was silent for a long moment. "There's a party tomorrow. For my daughter. Her husband got a new job. Afterwards, I'll increase the dose."

Megumi looked like she wanted to argue. Kaoru saw the mulish set of her jaw, and that her eyes were getting narrow and hard.

"I don't have much time. I want to enjoy what I do have." Yahiko tugged the blanket over his futon up and around his shoulders. He was shivering. "Better I hurt, and go, than be knocked out on morphine."

Megumi drummed her fingers on the futon's platform, clearly wanting to argue. Finally, she said, "I agree with Kaoru. You're such a _brat_ sometimes. You're so stubborn! Very well, hurt if you want to. I don't think a little more medication would make you groggy, but it's your call."

"Yeah." Yahiko met her eyes with a hard, inflexible glare of his own. "It's my call."

"Take more tonight, though. It'll wear off by the party tomorrow." She waved her hand in the air, dismissively. "You're a fool if you don't."

Yahiko seemed like he was going to argue that for a moment, but he didn't. Megumi turned to Kaoru, and said sternly, "Make sure he does it. And you're not very good at massages; get the man I recommended last week to come by and give him one tomorrow. It will help."

Kaoru _also _wanted to argue, but Megumi was right about her not being very good at massaging anyone, but particularly Yahiko. She had no patience, Yahiko was ticklish, and they ended up arguing at each other. Besides, it was weird. She'd tried a few times, because she knew it helped, but it was weird.

"Tsubame," Megumi said, "Was good."

"Are you trying to piss her off today, Megumi-san?" Yahiko said, grouchily. "Knock it off. I have to live with her after you leave."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kaoru protested, indignantly, as Megumi burst out laughing.

Still giggling, Megumi left.

She frowned at Yahiko. "I travel halfway across the world to you and you make fun of me. Some gratitude that is."

Yahiko stuck his tongue out at her.

"Brat." She said, finally cracking a smile. It was just so _familiar_ to bicker with Yahiko. She'd missed it so much.

--

Later, though, she lay alone on her futon, staring up at a starry sky visible through one window. She was scared, and was willing to admit that to her. She would have given anything to be able to turn back the clock -- to make Yahiko young, and well, again.

Kenshin had it worse, she told herself. Kenshin would see all of them age and die.

_Gods_, she would have given anything to have Kenshin here, now. Her heart hurt so bad,

It was utterly silent in the house. Spookily so. She found herself listening for noises, and hearing only the noise of blood rushing in her ears. Yahiko's home didn't have a furnace or radiators; at this hour, nobody moved outside. When a confused rooster crowed somewhere in the distance, the sound was a relief. When the house shifted and a timber creaked, she found herself jumping.

She missed Kenshin -- she would have given a lot to curl into his arms right now and have a good cry. He would hold her close, and they would talk and draw comfort from one another. Eventually, he might push her gently back to the futon. His weight on her would be comfortable, familiar. He would settle between her legs and gently make love to her, slim hips rocking back and forth. His hair, down, would fall in a curtain around his face ...

... he was half a world away.

She sighed. She missed him so much it was almost physically painful.

_I wish I could go home_, she thought, then felt terribly disloyal. Kenshin would wait -- Yahiko needed her now. She was being selfish, by wanting to go home.

__

And Yukio.

Kenshin had said, in a telegram she'd received yesterday, that Yukio was doing considerably better. Still, she would not be happy until she saw her son with her own eyes.

Restlessly, she rolled over. Sleep was not going to come easily tonight.

--

Kenshin tracked Michael McHenry down the following morning, just after dawn. The man had a nice home in a respectable part of town; when he knocked, the door was opened by a little girl wearing pigtails.

"Hi," she said, shyly, then stuck her fingers in her mouth. Kenshin guessed her to be three or four years old.

"Hi," he said, bending over. "Is Mr. McHenry here?"

"Upstairs." She held a spit-sticky hand out to Kenshin.

Kenshin had multiple children and grandchildren of his own; it was far from the first time he'd been slimed by a child. He simply smiled and let her lead him inside and up the stairs. Then he wiped his hand on his trousers discretely.

"Hey, Kenshin," Michael was in an office on the second floor. He looked up from a stack of papers. "Can I help you?"

"We need to talk," Kenshin said.

"Lucy, go find your mother." Michael shooed the kid off with a wave. Then he asked Kenshin, "About what?"

"You," Kenshin said, bluntly. He'd never been much inclined to beat around the bush. "You know about us."

Michael blinked at him. "Us? Us being who?"

Kenshin narrowed his eyes. "Immortals."

"I certainly don't know what you're talking about."

But Michael had sucked in a quick breath before saying that, and his eyes were wide. He darted a glance at the door, then at the clock on a shelf on the wall. He fidgeted. And Kenshin could sense _terror _from him.

Kenshin observed, "You're a very bad liar."

Michael lunged to his feet and said, with great feigned indignation, "You're calling me a _liar_? How _dare _you come into my house and accuse me of lying. I'm a man of God!"

Kenshin said, quite calmly, "I believe I do understand meaning of the word _liar _and I believe I do use the word correctly."

"Get out." Now the anger was real.

"Not until I have some answers." Kenshin let his ki flare.

Michael sucked in breath and took a step back. His thighs bumped into the edge of the desk. "Th-th-there's children in the house!"

Kenshin said shortly, well aware that his eyes were gleaming yellow and anyone with any trace of sensitivity would detect the focused deadly swordsman's _ki _he was radiating, "Then make the explanation low in volume."

"I can't!"

Kenshin dropped a hand to the sword at his waist.

"You don't kill!" Michael tried to sidle along the desk towards the window. Kenshin wondered if he was planning on jumping out. They were on the second floor and he suspected it was closer to three stories down on this side of the house. In a panicked voice he said, "You don't kill!"

"And you know that -- how?" Kenshin said, then added, "Not killing wouldn't stop me from breaking every bone in your body."

"They said you weren't violent! They said you'd be safe! I wanted someone easy because of the girls!"

Michael was scrambling frantically away from him, tripped over his own feet, and lunged across the room towards the window. He yanked the latch, which appeared to be shut.

"They. Who are they?" He drew his sword.

Michael spun back to face Kenshin and stammered, "I c-c-can't!"

Kenshin took one more step in his direction.

"W-watchers!" Michael's butt was pressed against the windowsill now. "W-watchers! I'm a watcher!"

"A what?" Kenshin stared at him.

"We-we watch. Study. Study Immortals. Please, you have to understand, we mean no harm. We're simply curious!"

Kenshin growled, "... what?"

McHenry said, placatingly, while waving his hands frantically in the air, "It's nothing bad, _really_. If you put the sword away, I'll tell you about it. Please. You're one of the good guys. They said you're one of the good guys. Like Duncan McLeod or Darius. Please calm down."

"_I _am calm." Kenshin said with disgust. "Start talking."

"I'm j-j-just a scholar! I sp-sp-specialize in ancient history. Biblical history. And the Immortals who've been around that long. Like the Four Horseman! I never w-w-wanted to do field work. They made me! They said I h-h-had to take a f-field assignment. So I a-a-asked for you when I heard you were coming here! Because you don't hurt people! I was watching McLeod and I was sure he'd figure me out! Melody's state was just dumb luck; I was trying to figure out how to approach you anyway!"

Kenshin put his sword away. And sighed an aggravated sigh. At a certain point, terrifying the subject of an interrogation became counterproductive. McHenry was making _no _sense.

"I'm just a researcher!"

"You research us?"

"Y-y-yeah."

"People _know _about us?"

"Y-y-yeah. You can't tell anyone! Please, don't tell anyone! They'll kill me!" McHenry suddenly lunged forward and fell to his knees at Kenshin's feet. "_Please _don't tell your friends about us. I'd be a dead man walking if they knew about us!"

There was ringing conviction in his voice, and real terror.

McHenry added, "My girls! If something happens to me, my girls ..."

He really did care about the girls. The home was not a front. Kenshin exhaled, then said quietly, "I won't tell anyone."

"Th-thank you." McHenry sat back on his heels, "I owe you. I owe you _everything_."

He narrowed his eyes and let a bit of gold glint through. "But start talking. And use the truth. Or I might lose my temper."

--

Kaoru woke late, to sun streaming through her room's window. She sat up, blinking. The house was so _quiet_. She'd lived most of the last few decades in the noisy, bustling Marshall household. Between the children and the servants, the house had never been completely silent.

Still, it seemed quieter than it ever had before.

She stood up, dressed for the day, and padded out to the kitchen. Yahiko wasn't up yet. He had taken the medication that Megumi had suggested last night, and perhaps he was sleeping it off. The narcotics really did wipe him out.

She started breakfast -- grilled fish and rice leftover from yesterday's dinner, a little natto to pour over the rice, and some vegetables. "Yahiko!" she called, "Are you going to sleep to noon?"

No answer.

She sighed, wondering if she should let him sleep, or wake him. Before she could decide, however, someone knocked at the gate.

Yawning, she went to answer it. Kenji was there. "Hey, Mom."

She hugged him. "What's up?"

"We're going to take a train ride. Sight seeing. Do you want to come?" He followed her back into the house.

She resumed heating the fish in a skillet over Yahiko's brazier. "Yahiko and I have a party we're going to. Ren -- Kiki's husband -- got a promotion. She probably didn't invite you and your family because they're pretty tight for money and there's a lot of you. I'm sorry."

"Oh." Kenji sighed. "How's Yahiko doing?"

"He's still asleep." She flipped the fish over. "Actually, would you do me a favor and wake him up? Breakfast is ready in a minute. There's enough here if you want to stay, too."

"Nah, I ate breakfast earlier. But I'll go wake him."

Kenji padded off to Yahiko's room. She heard him shout, "Hey! Old man! If you don't get up already, I'm going to eat your fish for you!"

Then, silence.

The house was so quiet. The only sound was the scrape of her spatula in the pan.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Kenji reappeared.

There was something terrible in the expression on his face. He walked into the kitchen, reached around her to remove the fish from the fire, and then, to her confusion, just wrapped her in a hug. "I'm so sorry, Mom. He won't be getting up. He won't. He's gone."

"... Gone? Where?" Had he gone out shopping or visiting when she was asleep? Gambling, perhaps? He still liked dice. Still played ever Friday with a handful of middle-aged men he'd known all his life.

She wanted to believe that was true. Yahiko had always been the most irresponsible of brats. How many times had she anguished and worried because he'd run off somewhere and not told her? That was it. He'd gone to the market. Or gone out to play dice. At nine AM in the morning.

"Did he leave a note?"

Kenji hiccuped. Then she realized he was crying. His arms tightened on her. Her son -- her tall, brave, strong son -- was sobbing.

"No," she whispered. "No ... we had plans today. No. No."

"He's gone." Kenji gripped her fiercely, almost painfully, muscular arms clenching her tight to his chest.

"NO! We were going to Kiki and Ren's party! He can't be!" She tried to shove free. "Let me go! Let me go!"

"No, mama." Kenji rocked back and forth. "No. He's gone."

"Let me go!"

Somehow, she managed to wriggle free, though she tore the sleeve of her kimono in doing so. She dodged his attempt to grab her and lunged down the hall. Angry, she flung the shoji open so hard that paper panels tore and bits of wood broke. It clattered to the ground behind her, off the tracks, obstructing the hall. She was dimly aware of Kenji stopping behind the destroyed door.

When the sound settled from that, there was only silence in the room.

She wanted to see Yahiko sitting up, blinking sleepily. He would be wincing a bit, and fumbling for the bottle of little pills beside his bed. Laudenum, in the low doses he had insisted on. Enough to blunt the pain, but let him still remain coherent and alert. That had been a fine balancing act, these last few weeks.

She wanted to see him sitting there.

She wanted to tell him breakfast was leftover fish and natto and rice.

She wanted to eat breakfast with him. They would trade insults, as they always had. They would talk about Yahiko's family, and Raeko. And then they'd brag over each of their grandchildren; who was the cleverest, the most cheerful, the cutest.

She wanted to tell him over breakfast that even though he'd grown from an obnoxious, uncultured, bratty child into an equally obstreperous man, she loved him as dearly as her children. He was the closest thing to a brother she'd ever had. She, an orphan with no family, had a brother.

She wanted to tell him all that. She never really had.

He would have mocked her, had she tried. But she wished she had.

She wanted to see him sitting there on the edge of the platform, awake.

The body was still. Silent. Motionless.

She knew it was a body and not a person. And not Yahiko.

It was silent.

Silent.

The house was so quiet.

He'd always snored.

She wondered how long he'd been gone. Most of the night, probably.

She approached the still, silent thing in the bed. She touched one cold, stiff hand. The face was relaxed, pain lines gone, a faint smile on its lips. The eyes were half open, and they stared past her without any sort of acknowledgment.

It was so tiny.

It didn't look like Yahiko at all.

But it was.

She turned to flee. To run and to cry and to wail her grief.

Her son was inspecting the damage she'd done to Yahiko's door, and not looking at her. He picked it up and leaned it against the wall. "I'll fix this later," he said. His voice was carefully controlled, but tears streaked down his face.

"Fix it now," she said, roughly. And then, because somebody had to, she said, "I'll go tell his daughters."

Kenji nodded quietly.

She took a deep breath and swallowed back her tears. And went to tell them. Because somebody had to. And she was it.


	90. Chapter 90

(Author's Note: Connor MacLeod's sword skills are quite ... erratic ... in the Highlander movies. In some scenes, he looks pretty good for an actor. In others, he's all _over _the place, leaving himself wide open, and waving his sword around like it was a flag. My explanation for this is in this chapter.)

"No!" Aki-kun pounded his fists into his father's chest. "No! No! You're lying! He promised he'd be here! He _said_."

Ren said sternly, "Aki, _stop _it."

"He promised! He promised! He promised!"

"STOP it!" Ren roared at his son. And pushed him away. "Don't be irrational!"

The child recoiled, and stared up at his father with huge eyes. Then he burst into tears, and ran. Ren growled something under his breath that sounded like _shameful_. Then he turned to Kaoru, who found herself curiously dry-eyed despite Aki-kun's hysterics. "I apologize, Himura-san. He's a difficult child."

"He's upset." That was Kiki. Her own eyes were brimming with tears. She stared at Kaoru, who had brought the bad news. Kaoru stared back. Behind Kiki, her daughter was sniffling.

Kaoru started to go after Yahiko's grandchild, but realized she had no idea where he had gone as soon as she looked out the front door of the house. He was nowhere in sight. She was angry at Ren; Aki was just a little boy. His grief was real. He shouldn't be expected to ...

"Child needs to _grow up_," Ren grumbled. "Making a scene like that. You'd think he was _two_. We all knew this was coming."

Indeed. She felt like throwing a tantrum very similar to little Aki's.

--

Shinya was silent.

Byron had never seen Shinya so quiet, so motionless. His lover sat crosslegged, staring into the glow of a paper lantern. His bangs, peppered through now with streaks of grey that hadn't been there when they first met, fell across his eyes. He barely seemed to be breathing.

"Shinya?" He said, quietly, wondering if he was disturbing something.

Shinya glanced over. As he did, tears started to trickle down his cheeks. "I wish I'd come back sooner."

Byron leaned his cane against the wall, and lowered himself to sit next to Shinya. Shinya crawled into his arms. He wasn't crying aloud and Byron didn't think he would, at least, not great messy sobs. Shinya's tears were quiet, dignified, but full of searing grief and hurt for all that.

He smoothed the other man's hair, and held him close. "I'm sorry."

Shinya didn't say a word. He just clung to Byron, and for once, he was not the strong one.

--

"Mother?"

Megumi looked up as her long-legged coltish daughter stepped into the room. Raeko was barefoot, with mud on her knees, and smeared across one cheek. She had two fish on a stringer, dangling from one hand, a large seashell in the other hand, and she smelled of the ocean.

"Caught dinner," she said, proudly.

"You've been gone since yesterday morning." Megumi felt her lips thinning into a disapproving, unhappy line. Why couldn't her daughter be ladylike and gentle? Or, at least, a scholar? At fourteen, Raeko was refusing to attend school -- or do basically anything that Megumi asked of her. Rebellious didn't begin to cover it. She was brilliantly intelligent and she wouldn't even _try_.

Her sharp words just earned her a shrug.

"I am ashamed of you."

Another shrug.

Megumi took a deep breath. "Your uncle Yahiko died this morning."

"No!" Raeko dropped the fish. They hit the ground with a wet splat. One was twitching a bit, but not really flopping. It was a good long walk from the shore. "No, you're lying!"

"Have I ever lied to you?" Megumi snarled at the girl. They had been making funeral plans all day, and in the midst of that, she'd been worrying about her daughter as well, because Raeko had not come home the night before.

Yahiko would say, _At least it's fish and not a boy, _Megumi thought. Honestly, she wasn't even sure if Raeko liked boys. At fourteen she ought to be showing at least _some _interest in the opposite sex.

"But ... no!" Raeko wailed. "No, no, no!"

"The funeral's in two days. You will be there." Megumi took some satisfaction in saying, "You will wear a proper woman's kimono."

Raeko screamed, "I hate you! Don't you have any sympathy at all? Uncle Yahiko's dead and you're talking about clothes!" And turned and ran back out the door.

Megumi sighed. "Sympathy? I just lost one of my best friends, you little ..."

Her words were lost, however, on the child. Raeko was already gone.

Well, she had two days to convince the girl to bathe, do her hair, and shove her into something ladylike. Alternately, she could tell the girl not to attend any of the ceremonies, as disrespectful as that would be to the Myojins. She really didn't care what Raeko's opinion was, she was sick of her daughter's attitude. It seemed to be getting worse by the day. _Sano_, she though in irritation, _She's your daughter. I wish you were here to do something with her. I give up._

--

When Melody returned home from shopping in the market, she found Kenshin downstairs in the parlor-turned-dojo. Ken was dressed in colorful purple hakama and a white gi, was barefoot, and had a glittering length of steel in one hand.

He was facing an opponent -- average height, brown hair, blue eyes, muscular. The other man was wearing a loose shirt and battered dungarees. Kenshin cut a far more dashing figure, she thought, though on closer inspection she saw that Kenshin's outfit had been torn and mended a few times and showed some frazzled seams and a patch or two. It was a working outfit, albeit one that had a lot of bright colors to it.

Well, she'd already figured out that Ken was a peacock.

__

For Christmas, I'm knitting him a sweater in all the colors of the rainbow, she thought. His love of bright colors amused her, and somehow made her happy. It was just so innocent.

Both men looked up as she entered, and sheathed their swords. "Good afternoon, Melody-dono," Kenshin said.

"Oh, continue." Melody smirked, as she carried the groceries across the room towards the kitchen. She said in a sultry voice, "Two handsome men playing with their very big swords. I want to watch."

Kenshin turned bright red, and stuttered in protest, "Et-to, ... M-Melody-dono!"

The other man just laughed. "Yukio, she's a keeper."

Yukio, she realized belatedly, was seated at the top of the stairs, watching the bout. He shot back, "Don't get any ideas, Connor. Or _I'll _have to take your head."

Connor chuckled at that, too; apparently, he was another Immortal. She blushed a bit now, however; it was one thing to hassle Kenshin, who was not "available." It was quite another to make rude innuendos in front of Yukio, who she was trying to impress with ladylike behavior. Sometimes, her mouth was faster than her brain.

Ken cleared his throat. "Melody, this is Connor MacLeod. Connor, Melody."

She deposited the groceries on the counter and returned to the room in time to see the two men salute each other with their blades again. She settled on one of the benches against the wall to watch, while her embarrassment faded.

Steel rang against steel, so fast that her eyes couldn't follow the movement. Kenshin spun past Connor, a blur of bright colors, bare feet dancing across the wood. It was very clear who the faster swordsman was.

Connor was sloppy. She could see that just watching him. Where Kenshin's movements were precise, lighting quick, and where he spared no extra motion, Connor's hands and the tip of his sword were bobbling all over the place. His footwork looked clumsy, too; his stocking feet slipped and slid on the wooden floor.

Kenshin sheathed his sword, and assumed a quiveringly alert stance.

Connor regarded him warily.

When Kenshin attacked, it was so quick she didn't even see what precisely happened. One minute he was facing Connor. The next, Kenshin was tumbling across the floor, separated from his sword. Kenshin slid into the wall with a _thump _and his blade lay quivering like a tuning fork on the ground.

Connor, grinning, reached over and picked Kenshin's blade up. Kenshin wasn't getting up at all -- he was lying totally motionless.

"Killed his ass," Connor said, then glanced at her, and threw her a sloppy salute in apparent recognition of the rude word. "Ma'am."

"You killed him?" She stood up.

"You _killed _him?" Yukio seemed incredulous. "But, but, he's _better _than you."

"Oh, gee, thanks, brat." Connor walked over to Kenshin and toed him. He flopped over, and she saw there was a blackening bruise along the side of Kenshin's jaw and his neck was very obviously broken.

Her stomach churned. She wanted to vomit. Yukio looked rattled when she glanced up at him to gauge his reaction, but not nearly as much as she did. Well, Yukio had told her he'd seen his father come back from the dead once. Her instincts as the daughter of a doctor who'd seen men die before were screaming that Ken was dead and would never come back. She wanted to cry, to puke. She was _angry_ that Connor had done this.

"_How_?" Yukio demanded. "I haven't seen anyone beat my father, ever!"

Connor shrugged. "One of my teachers moved very much like Kenshin does. He's easy to predict if you know his style."

"You _know _Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu?" Yukio stammered.

"Is that what he calls it?" Connor asked, absently. He pushed Kenshin's head in line with his neck with one bare foot. "My sensei subscribed to a different school, but that was four hundred years ago. Names change and drift over the centuries. But the moves -- they're very similar."

"You're not as good as he is!" Yukio protested.

Connor snorted. "I just beat him, didn't I?"

Melody said quietly, "You know his weaknesses."

"Ayup." Connor sheathed his sword and sprawled on the bench beside her. He smelled of leather and iron, smoke and sweat, and she noticed his fingernails were broken and his palms even rougher and more thickened than Kenshin's. "Geeze, does he always take this long to come around?"

--

"Baka deshi!"

Kenshin opened his eyes to find he was laying in a clearing in the grass, under a tree. He knew he was on a different plane of existence as soon as he heard Hiko's annoyed voice.

"Hello, Hiko," he sat up -- and met not Hiko's gaze, but Yahiko's.

This was an athletic, not-much-older-than-teenage Yahiko. He looked as he had when he had first married Tsubame -- handsome and young and strong. Yahiko was seated casually in the grass, one knee tucked to his chest, and the other leg straight out in front of him. He watched Kenshin with an amused look on his face, and said, "Unlike your shishou, I just think it's damn funny."

"Feh." Hiko was standing behind Yahiko, arms folded, and a surpremely disgusted look on his face. "He's a complete idiot. That gaijin swordsman isn't a tenth as good as Ken is. My idiot apprentice was careless and foolish."

Yahiko shrugged. "Like I said: funny."

Kenshin didn't even remember being killed. He said with real concern, "He didn't take my head, did he?" He paused, then added crossly to Hiko, "Why haven't you reincarnated yet, anyway?"

Hiko snorted and ignored Kenshin's grouchy question about reincarnation. "It would serve you right if he did take your head."

Kenshin decided arguing with Hiko was low on his list of priorities at the moment. He turned his attention to Yahiko with some concern, "If you're here ..."

Yahiko sighed. "When you wake up, will you do me a favor? Send a telegram to Japan and tell Kiki to have the damn party. Tell her I'll **_be _**there in spirit, so to speak."

"Ah ..."

"I promised I would." Yahiko met Kenshin's eyes. "I always keep my promises."

"When did it happen?" Kenshin asked, wondering if Kaoru knew. He hadn't gotten a telegram yet, so it had to have been very recently.

"Last night. I was so tired of hurting, Kenshin. I don't, anymore. They miss me, but they'll also do fine." He glanced away, no longer looking at Kenshin. "I wanted to stay for them ... but I was so _tired. _And they don't need me anymore._"_

Kenshin wanted to say a lot of things to Yahiko. He didn't even know where to start, however. Perhaps it wasn't necessary to say anything at all -- they understood each other very well. They always had.

Yahiko stood up and walked over to him. Gravely, they stood an arm's length apart, regarding each other somberly. Then Yahiko said, "You better take good care of Kaoru."

Kenshin inclined his head in acknowledgement. Yahiko knew that he would, but Yahiko loved Kaoru as the dearest of family; it was something he needed to say.

"And don't lose your head." Yahiko said, softly. "The world needs you. Be careful. There's trouble coming for you."

Hiko spoke up, "And _you _should not spar with someone who knows your style."

"Et-to ... he does?" Kenshin was floored by that, and distracted from Yahiko's warning.

"He baited you right into Battoujitsu, then dodged the blow and caught you on the back of the neck with the flat of his sword, hard enough that if he'd used the edge you'd have been a head shorter. I was _watching_. Nitwit." Hiko shook his head. "That man is muchbetter than he let on, and he had you wrapped right around his finger the whole time. You walked right into a trap he laid for you. Had he not been a friend, you would be dead."

"I didn't sense anything ..." Kenshin stammered.

"He's five hundred years old." Hiko snorted. His tone was downright condescending when he added, "Think about it, baka deshi. If he's lived that long, and makes a regular habit of fighting other people to the death, you have to assume he's very good. And he's had plenty of time to learn to mask his _ki_ in a fight."

"You're enjoying this," Kenshin accused. It was a stunning revelation that Connor had been playing him for a fool. Kenshin had thought him good, if sloppy; not _brilliant_.

Now, however, he realized Hiko had been right. He'd been a fool. A man who didn't have a sense for steel could not make the beautiful swords he had seen in the man's shop. A man who didn't have considerable skill would not have survived five hundred years of fighting, either. He felt a hot, embarrassed heat turn his cheeks to fire.

In a much milder tone, Yahiko said, "You missed him by about half an inch, Ken. And he _planned _it that way. He's very good. Some of that slop in his swing is real, but he was reading you like a book."

"I didn't think ..." Kenshin was floored.

"You're better," Hiko was laughing at him. Kenshin knew his expression must be stunned, and humiliated and _angry_ at himself. Hiko continued, "Which makes it all the funnier that he killed you. Baka deshi, baka deshi ... old enough to be a grandfather and still an impetuous idiot. Go on back and beat on him a bit. We'll be watching."

And then they faded away.

--

Kenshin finally, after ten minutes of of anxious waiting on Melody's part, twitched and gasped. He sat up.

She exclaimed, "Oh, thank god!"

"Yeah," Connor said, "I was getting ready to go home and come back tomorrow."

Kenshin rubbed his neck. It was sore, and stiff, and his toes tingled when he stood up. Connor looked vastly amused. He said, "Battoujitsu, Kenshin. It's an all-or-nothing strike. Somewhat of a risky move towards another Immortal."

Kenshin sighed audibly. Melody thought he looked quite irritated. "You mock me too?"

__

Too? Who's he talking about?

Connor tossed him his sword back. Kenshin caught it easily, and dropped it into the sheath at his waist. "Another round?"

"A brief one," Kenshin said. Melody thought his expression was very odd. "I have a telegram I need to send."

Connor smirked. "You are a glutton for punishment."

"Perhaps." Kenshin sounded grim now.

Connor assumed a battle-ready pose.

With a shout, Kenshin launched himself at Connor. This time, it was Connor who went down in a heap. Melody hadn't even registered that Kenshin had moved before Connor was laid out. He was not dead, but had he been mortal, that attack would have resulted in lasting injuries.

Yukio cheered.

Kenshin bowed in the general direction of the body. Smugly, he said, "I _am _the better swordsman."

Connor mumbled thickly, from his position on the floor "Best two of three?"

"Perhaps later." Kenshin sobered. "You have taught me a valuable lesson, Connor."

"Yeah?" Connor propped himself up on his elbows and regarded Kenshin suspiciously.

"Never underestimate my own ability to be a fool." Kenshin offered him a hand up.

"Been telling you that since I met you." Connor waved Kenshin's hand away. "I think I'll sit here until my leg knits back together."

__

Sparring Immortal style, Melody decided, _Is quite interesting._

--

Shinya was seated at a desk in the hotel room, a pen in one hand, and a stack of stationary in the other. His expression was troubled. Byron walked over and rested a hand on his shoulder, and looked curiously at the paper. The script was all in Japanese -- he hadn't a clue what Shinya was writing.

Shinya glanced at him and said by way of quiet explanation, "They're expecting me to ... arrange things."

"You? You haven't lived here in forever. You're just visiting!"

"Well," Shinya said, with a small shrug, "He was my father. I just ... I've never done this before. And it's so _expensive._"

"Don't worry about the money."

Shinya snorted. "Right, my lover and my best friend are both filthy stinking rich English lords. Money? Not a problem. Right. But it's _still _expensive."

He said in much softer voice., "I'd like to buy a family crypt but I can't afford it myself -- it's way more than I make from the dojo. We don't have a crypt -- nobody's died in the family since my father's mother, when he was just a little boy. My mom was temporarily interred in her father's family's crypt in Kyoto, but we can move her here ... Sanosuke is buried in the Kamiya cript, and Kaoru is offering that Dad could go there too, with mom, but ..."

"How much?"

Shinya named a figure in British pounds that made Byron let out a low whistle.

"I think that's right ..." Shinya gestured at a piece of paper covered in Japanese script that was scratched out and written over, and which Byron recognized as numbers. He'd picked up a little, though Shinya was definitely far more fluent in English and romani script than he was in Japanese. "... if I'm figuring the exchange rate correctly. I'm sorry, it's a lot, but it'd mean everything to the family."

"Yeah, we can do that." Byron nodded firmly. "I'll cover what you can't."

"I know it's a terrible lot ..."

"Shinya," Byron shook his head. "You never ask me for _anything_. My grandfather left me plenty of money -- surprised the hell out of me, but he did. Same as my brothers. I can afford it easily."

"Thank you."

Byron smiled faintly. "It's for your father. It's important to you. Of course I'll help."

--

Kaoru affixed a white sheet to Yahiko's household shrine. Superstition had it that the restless, impure ghosts of the dead could contaminate the shrine. Supposedly, the sheet kept them out.

She glanced over her shoulder at the body laying in state in the middle of the room. It was still too damned small, and it looked nothing like Yahiko. Bags of ice were piled over the top to keep the smell down; it was promising to be a warm autumn day -- a persistently gusty wind wasn't doing much for cooling things off. She'd bathed him earlier, and prepared the body, but would change him into funeral attire later. The water from the ice would ruin his best suit, otherwise.

Practical as always, Megumi had brought the ice.

The sheet fell off the shrine.

Kaoru stared at it, then lifted it back up and pushed several thumbtacks through the sheet to hold it in place. It wasn't heavy; it shouldn't have pulled free that easily.

She was tugging a bit on the sheet to make sure it was secure when Kenji appeared. He had Byron and Shinya with him -- Shinya looked pale, and drawn, and exhausted. She knew that the young man had been spending most of yesterday talking to shrines and funeral directors and the family, making arrangements. Really, she thought it would have been nice if the girls had helped, but they were pushing all the work onto Shinya as the eldest son.

Well, he didn't have children, and they did. Perhaps they just didn't have the time.

At least it was better than Kenshin's "funeral" in England. Mrs. Marshall had run the show there, completely riding over everyone else's wishes to be low-key about the matter. If it weren't for the fact that Kenshin weren't actually dead, and Kaoru wasn't nearly as upset as she had been pretending, she might have physically harmed the woman. Mrs. Marshall had insisted on a "proper" Christian funeral, with a great deal of pomp and pageantry, for a man who not only wasn't dead, he wasn't even Christian.

It was funny how funerals and weddings brought out the worst behavior in family.

Her mind had wandered -- she realized Kenji had said something. "Huh?"

"Mother? You okay?"

"Yeah, fine." She forced a yawn. "Just tired. What did you say?"

"I said that you have a telegram from Dad. The delivery lady was out by the gate a second ago." Kenji had concern in his eyes. His red hair, tousled by the wind, fell messily in his eyes.

"Oh." She held her hand out for the piece of paper.

Kenji handed it over, and Kaoru glanced at it. She was expecting a report on Yukio's health. However, there were only three sentences.

__

YAHIKO SAYS YOU SHOULD HAVE THE PARTY WITH REN AND KIKI STOP HE WILL BE THERE IN SPIRIT STOP EXPLAIN MORE LATER STOP I LOVE YOU STOP KENSHIN

That message left an awful lot unsaid. Kenshin's telegrams tended to be spare; this was probably due to combination of his difficulty with English and the fact that they were very expensive to send. However, this was unusually short and lacking in details even for him. She handed it over to Kenji, who lifted an eyebrow and passed it to his brother and Shinya.

Shinya snorted. "Somebody got dead recently."

"You think that's what this is about?" Kaoru said, with a shudder. "I am glad I wasn't there to see it."

"Maybe he just slit his own throat or something so he could talk to dead people. He's morbid enough to do it," Byron suggested, with a laugh that also earned him a grin from Shinya.

"He probably didn't send all the grim details in a message because the telegraph operator would see it. 'Gee, Kaoru, I died today and talked to the dead spirit of Yahiko, and then I came back to life' ..." Byron said, shaking his head in bemusement. "But I think we can assume that he's okay since he sent a telegram."

At that moment, the white sheet over the shrine came loose.

Kaoru turned around and stamped her foot. "_Stop _that, you sacrilegious little ... ooh!"

A shutter slammed somewhere in the house.

"Figures he'd be a damned poltergeist," Byron muttered. "He's hyperactive enough for it."

The shutter slammed again, louder, and then repeatedly.

"Dad!" Shinya shouted, "We hear you!"

Byron scratched his jaw. "I think you need to have that party. Maybe with a séance as the highlight."

Kaoru shook her head. She was reasonably sure that shutter was just the wind blowing; she could hear it whistling around the eaves. Still, in case he was listening, she threatened, "Maybe with an exorcism as the highlight."


	91. Chapter 91

_(Author's Note: The typhoon mentioned in the next couple of chapters really happened. It was severe enough that communications with Yokohama were cut off for four days. However, I was unable to find any specific details of what happened, so I am simply assuming some typical damage from a typhoon. Much of Kyoto is below sea level.)_

_--_

Two weeks had passed since his injuries, and he was well enough now to sit up and read or study -- at least, in theory. Yukio's school had provided a stack of homework; Yukio scowled at it, wondering why it was so hard. He just didn't want to domath today. Maybe that was it. He sat at a little desk in his bedroom, trying to decide if boredom or schoolwork was worse.

"Hey," Melody said, stepping into his room. "I baked cookies."

"Don't want cookies," he said, hearing a sullen note in his own voice that shocked him. And the funny thing was, he _did _want them -- they smelled wonderful, and looked to be oatmeal raisin cookies, if he wasn't mistaken. He flinched mentally -- the last few weeks had been hell; he'd been snarling at everyone, or if he wasn't snarling, he was crying in frustration. He was not normally someone who cried. Or yelled.

"You're having trouble with your homework?" She said, setting the tray of cookies and two large glasss of creamy milk down on the desk. Melody had been remarkably ... calm. Perhaps he took things out on her more than on his father, because Kenshin simply turned around and walked away when he was rude. It ashamed him, to speak to her this way.

"I said I didn't want the cookies." He heard the anger in his own voice and it shocked him. He added, "Sorry."

"Somebody's grumpy."

"Sorry." He hesitated, then confessed, "They smell good."

"See? You want cookies. And then after, we'll work on your schoolwork."

He reached for a cookie with his left hand and managed to dunk it in the milk without spilling anything. She grabbed one for herself. He sampled it; it was quite good. Melody was an excellent baker.

"I just ..."

"You get frustrated." She surprised him by putting an arm around his shoulders. "And it's hard to focus, and you're all out of sorts."

"Yeah."

"You got conked in the head pretty good. And you're still healing. Give yourself time."

"The school's letting me turn my assignments in from home," he said, reluctantly, "but ... but I can't _do _them." He balled his good fist up and slammed it down on the desk top. Both glasses of milk tipped over, with the mess landing in his lap and splashing all over Melody's skirt.

"DAMN IT!" he swore, and started to jump to his feet. As soon as he put weight down on his shattered ankle it exploded with pain -- the wound was still open and draining, and the bones had only begun to knit -- it very painful. Melody had confessed to him that he might never have full use of that foot back. He shocked himself by bursting into exasperated tears at the reminder that he might be a cripple.

Melody stared at him for a moment then said, sensibly, "It's just spilled milk. Wait a minute and I'll get a towel."

She was gone more than a minute. He was grateful for that; he took several deep, ragged breaths and struggled for control. He didn't even know where that burst of anger had come from. It had just overwhelmed him.

When Melody finally reappeared, she had both the towel and two new glasses of milk. "Don't spill these," she warned, "We're out until the milkman comes tomorrow morning."

Somehow, that struck him as funny, and he started giggling. She gave him an odd look, then knelt to mop the milk up off the floor. He couldn't stop laughing, and he had an idea he'd upset her somehow. Desperately, he struggled for control. And it was frustrating, and suddenly he was _angry _again.

He started to dash the glasses of milk to the ground -- irrationally, furiously, _angry_.

His hand collided with Melody's arm as she swept it up to block his blow. She sprang to her feet and they stared at one another.

_How dare she judge me _...

It was a random stray thought, but it seared through his brain like a red-hot brand. Pain. Grief. Something was _wrong _with him, he saw in that moment of crystal clarity, and Melody couldn't ever accept him like this. He didn't know if he wanted to shriek in anger or burst into horrified tears of loss and grief. He settled for doing both, in an inarticulate shout of raw emotion.

She recoiled across the room.

"Get out!" He couldn't stand looking at her anymore. "Get out! Get out!"

"No." Her words were utterly calm.

But the denial was frustrating. "OUT!"

"No." She sat down on the edge of the bed. "I'm not going anywhere until you get control of yourself."

He reached for the milk without even thinking.

"If you throw that at me, so help me God, I'll dump the other one over your head." Her words were absolutely calm.

He threw it.

She dodged. The glass landed on the bed, making a soggy splash. In one smooth move, she darted across the room, dodged his attempt to block her, scooped the other glass up, and upended it into his hair. Milk trickled down around his ears and into his eyes.

"I heard shouting!" That was his father, who had practically run into the room. Kenshin stared at him. Yukio burst into tears despite the fact that he had a rather strong desire not to look like a baby in front of his father! Kenshin blandly said, "I see you have everything under control, Melody-dono ... thank you for all of your assistance."

And he turned around and walked back out.

"Father! Help!"

Melody hit him in the face with a towel. "Clean yourself up. I'll bring a basin in later to wash your hair with."

"I hate you." Except he didn't. He loved her. And dimly, he was aware that he'd more than deserved the milk shower. He whimpered. "I don't know why ... I don't ... what's _wrong _with me?"

"You've had a concussion," she pointed a finger at him. "Which explains the behavior, but it doesn't make it acceptable. Either start acting like a human being or I swear to God, I'll move in with the preacher as soon as you're able to take care of yourself."

He stared at her, stunned. She meant every word. Had he been that awful to her?

_Yeah. I just threw milk at her. _In a burst of crystal clarity he realized just how obnoxious he was being. More than that, he could have hurt her if she hadn't dodged in time. He burst into tears. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry ..."

"Oh, don't be pathetic." But she crossed the room and wrapped her arms around him, gently, mindful of his healing hurts. "I know it's hard."

"I can't stop ..." He took a deep, ragged breath. He wasn't sure if he liked the hug or not, though he remembered once that he would have been utterly delighted to be hugged by her. Now, it set his heart to racing and his hormones surging in ways he was terrified he couldn't control. Shakily, he said, "I can't _stop. _It's utterly irrational, but I can't _stop ... _everything frustrates me. Everything makes me angry. Or it's funny, even when it's not, really. Everything's so much ... stronger. Melody, I'm ... I'm _scared_."

"Shh."

"I can't ... I can't control ... I can't control myself."

"I know it's hard, but you _can _do it." She kissed his forehead, unmindful of the milk. "But I swear you throw any food at me again, and you _will _end up wearing it every single time. I'm your friend, not your slave."

"I love you." He blurted the words out, then wished he could take them back. It was not exactly the time to tell her that sort of thing.

She straightened up. Quietly, she said, "I know you do."

"Do you ..."

Lightly, she said, "I like you a lot more when you're not throwing things at me or screaming at me. So if you want to impress me, you know what you've got to do."

"Oh."

--

When Melody carried empty glasses and the tray of uneaten cookies downstairs, Kenshin was waiting. She knew he was waiting for her because he'd made two cups of tea.

"Thanks." She set the dishes in the sink and accepted the cup of tea from him.

"There's no milk left for your tea, I'm sorry," he said, raising an eyebrow at her.

"He had it coming." She knew she sounded defensive when she said that.

"Yes, he did. Thank you."

"Thank ...?" She was surprised by this.

Kenshin lifted one shoulder in half a shrug. "Coddle him, not good."

"He threw a glass at me."

"Yes." Kenshin nodded. "Did he hurt you?"

"No. I saw it coming." She sipped the tea, and wished it was the wasted milk. It would have tasted good with the cookies.

Kenshin picked a cookie up off the plate. "These are very good."

"Thank you."

"About my son. He hit his head, hurt himself. Up here." Kenshin tapped his skull with a finger that had been broken at least once.

"I know." She'd seen men with head injuries before, a few times. She recognized Yukio's complete inability to control his emotions. It was like he had no brakes on his feelings and his actions.

"He get better faster if we insist on good behavior." Kenshin took a bite from his cookie, chewed, swallowed. "He must learn discipline again. Harder, now, for him. But he can do it."

She snorted. "I already told him he'd be wearing any food he throws at me."

Kenshin flashed her a grin of acknowledgment. "He need your help, for sure. I could hire a nurse, who would coddle him and baby him. Not what he needs. You keep demanding he act like a man. He do it, because he wants to please you. Oh, and he do his homework, too."

"I'll go up and help him later." She rubbed her forehead. Kenshin would be lost if he tried to figure out either Yukio's math assignments or his English homework. However, she could guarantee that Yukio would collapse into tears at least once, and probably rage several times. It had been three weeks since he'd been injured and if he'd gotten any better, she couldn't see it.

"Thank you. Melody, I need to return to work soon. It is backlogged badly. I may also bring some home for Yukio. It would do him good to be useful."

She snorted. "Or he'll have a complete fit at me."

"You can handle it," Kenshin assured her. "I'll just order some extra milk."

--

They placed Yahiko's ashes in a crypt on an oppressively hot afternoon on October 4th, under a leaden sky. The children were silent; the adults, somber.

Afterwards, she planned to sleep one more night in Yahiko's house, and she turned down an offer from Jessica and Kenji to share their hotel room. When she arrived home it was silent in the house, and she knelt before the shrine at dusk and stared into the light of a single flickering candle. Outside, a gusty wind whistled around the house's eaves.

It was funny how much she missed him. They hadn't been part of each other's life for well over a decade, at least, not until recently. But she missed the funny, ornery, honorable little boy who had grown into a man who'd made her proud.

"You made me proud," she said aloud, simply, wondering if he heard her words.

And that pretty much said it all. She could have tried for hours to find other words to describe how much she'd loved him, and what a wonderful man he'd grown up to be. But her almost-brother almost-son was gone. And simply, she was proud of the life he'd lived.

When thunder crackled across the sky, she jumped. She wasn't particularly surprised to see a storm, just startled by the noise; the air had been pregnant with energy all day.

And then the rain started to come down in great pounding sheets. Startled, she stepped outside onto the ogawa -- a gust of wind caused her to be pelted by enormous, ice cold raindrops and she quickly retreated inside. As she hurried about closing shutters, it became obvious that this was not just an autumn thunderstorm. The wind was quickly rising.

_Typhoon_, she thought, without much alarm. Yahiko's house was well constructed, and well above sea level.

She did a quick mental inventory of the family. The hotel where the Marshalls was staying was sturdy and solid; it would be fine in all but the worst of storms. Yahiko's two eldest girls were staying there as well tonight; it was too far to go home in one day after the funeral. The three youngest all had good, sturdy homes in an area far from the ocea.

However ... Ren and Kiki, had been struggling to make ends meet for years. She thought of their home, a row house in a rough neighborhood close to the docks and barely above the high tide mark, and her heart sank. If this was as bad as she feared it could be, they would be at risk.

She decided,_ I've time to go get them. Ren's so proud, he'd never come here, and he'll want to stay with their belongings. But I've seen that neighborhood flood during a storm before. _

She grabbed a pair of her trousers and a gi, and borrowed Yahiko's winter coat to wear over that, and quickly changed -- boy's clothing was more practical during a howling storm than her kimono. Thus dressed, she stepped out into the pelting, icy storm and went to go get them.

--

"Ren, we should go to ..."

"No!" Ren paced restlessly as the walls shuddered around them.

Kiki held their daughter in her arms. Behind Ren, little Aki was huddled into a ball in a chair, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His eyes were huge in his head and he was shivering. The air was cold, and damp, and the wind was blowing so hard that water was flowing in under the door and around the window panes.

"It'll be fine ..." Ren said, soothingly. "It's just a thunderstorm."

The door banged open as someone shoved on it. Kaoru, soaked to the skin, slid through, and said shortly, "You need to get out of here. _Now_."

"Obaachan!" Kiki said, in shock.

Kaoru regarded her crossly. "When have I been Obaachan to _you_?"

"Sorry!" Kiki apologized, reflexively, "Himura-san."

Apparently, Kaoru didn't like being called _granny_. Well, the littles did. But maybe she resented it from adults. This amused Kiki a bit; everyone called Kaoru _granny _behind her back.

Kaoru said, without any further preamble, "You need to get out of here. This whole area's going to flood."

"It's just a thunderstorm ..." Ren started to protest, but when a gust of wind made the walls shudder, he went pale and fell silent.

"I can feel it in my _bones_, Ren," Kaoru said, "It's a typhoon, and a bad one."

"We always have typhoons this time of year. Every year. We'll be fine." Ren tried to sound soothing. "Don't worry, Obaa... Kaoru-san."

"This is a _bad _one." Kaoru stamped a foot, looking like she was four when she did it, and not a grey-haired older lady -- but her frustration was real. "We need to get your children out of here. I didn't just walk several miles in a downpour because I _wanted _to. You can stay if you want, but the kids need to go."

"She's right. This isn't just a thunderstorm." Kiki set her daughter down, and said shortly, "Ren, I'm leaving. You can come or not. I'd appreciate the help with the children, though."

"Okay, okay," he grumbled. "But it's just a thunderstorm."

"Get your coats," Kiki said, to the kids. "Aki, grab mine and your father's."

"And we'll get some food," Ren said, after another howling fit of wind set the door to rattling in its frame. Ren swallowed as her ears popped; it was hailing outside. He said, "If this is not a thunderstorm, we might need it."

Kiki nodded, and the two adults hurried into the small flat's kitchen area, where they retrieved a small bag of rice and few packages of tea and salted prunes, plus a couple of jars of pickled vegetables. It was a rather pitiful assemblage of groceries, and Kiki was briefly resentful of Kaoru, whose family was so wealthy that Kenshin could simply shove a purse of money into her father's hand and tell him to _go have fun, have a vacation._

_We could have used that money for food, _she thought, a little bitterly. _Or to move to a better place. But Father took us all to Kyoto instead. Such a waste of money._

Well, it wasn't her money. But if Yahiko had set it aside rather than spending it on a vacation for the whole family, she might have inherited some of it.

They chivvied the children out the door and into the storm. The window was truly whipping now, and trash and small branches tumbled across the street amid a waterfall of rain. Kaoru had lived in Tokyo long enough to be very wary of summer and autumn typhoons -- mostly, they were a nuisance, but this one felt ... different.

Lightning crackled across the sky, a spiderweb of light. Seconds later, thunder cracked. Aki yelped, and she said over the roar of the wind and rain, "It's okay. You'll be safe at Yahiko's place."

"Is our home going to be ruined?" Aki said, sounding scared.

"You'll be safe," she repeated.

He fell silent, but slipped his hand into hers. He was, she recalled, the same age as Yahiko had been. But Yahiko would _never _have held her hand. He'd have called her _ugly _and scoffed at the need for any sort of comfort. He would have been leading the adults to safety, given half a chance.

She put her arm around Aki's shoulders. He looked terrified. "It'll be okay."

He nodded bravely. "I'm okay, Obaachan."

The storm made it difficult to talk, so they just hurried through it for the few miles uphill to Yahiko's home. They were almost there, however, when Aki suddenly dug his heels and stopped. In a panicked voice he said, "The katana!"

"Huh?" She had completely forgotten that Shinya had given Aki Kenshin's sword; it took her a moment to realize what he was talking about. Kenshin was always so precise about describing the sword as a _sakabatou_, and Shinya and Yahiko had followed his lead. It was very important that the blade was reversed, and they never forgot it. She'd honestly never heard anyone just call it a katana.

"The Battousai's katana!" The boy elaborated, in a horrified tone of voice. He twisted away from her, ripping his hand out of her grasp. He bolted, dodged his father's panicked snatching grab, and disappeared into the storm.

Ren snarled at her, "Couldn't you hold on to him?"

"I ..." She stared at the boy's father in shock, stunned that he would use such a rude tone on her. Then, over the howl of the storm, she snarled back, "Well, go _after _him already!"

With a disgusted oath, Ren splashed off through the rain after his son. Kaoru stared after him until she couldn't make him out in the rain anymore, then headed off towards Yahiko's house. Someone had to see that Kiki and her little girl made it to shelter.

And if Ren didn't turn Aki-kun over his knee, she'd do it for him, when they found him. The sword was important, but not worth anyone's life. Aki-kun was completely missing the point of what the sword symbolized if he thought he should be risking his hide for it.


	92. Chapter 92

The wind was blowing so hard by the time that Aki reached his parent's row house, he could barely walk against it. It took every ounce of strength he had to push the door open six inches and slide inside -- something seemed to be wrong with the track.

He ran back to the alcove he shared with his little sister and retrieved the sword from the hooks his father had put on the wall.

His father had muttered resentfully about the sword, _This thing would pay for good home for us, but I suppose we can't sell it._

Kiki had smacked him for the suggestion. He'd been horrified that his father would contemplate taking it from him -- he'd never been entrusted with anything so important or valuable in his life. And his father would just _sell _it?

Clutching the sword to his chest, he ran for the door. However, the tatami on the floor squelched wetly -- it had been dry only a second before. He was surprised by this, and stopped, and looked about for the source of the water.

It was pouring over the door's threshold -- a brown, surging fountain of water visible by the gaslights outside. Alarmed, he backed away from the door.

A window broke.

Water began to boil up under the floorboards.

He whimpered.

The door was suddenly flung open. A boy, no older than he was, stood there in the opening. The boy's hair was plastered flat to his skull by the raging rain, and he was wearing a very old fashioned pair of yellow hakama and a gi. "You need to get out of here!"

He started to cry. He couldn't help it. The water was up to his knees now, and it was deeper, in the street -- the row house was built a couple of feet up in the air. He didn't know how to swim.

The other boy lunged into the room, grabbed him by the wrist, and, impossibly strong, towed him outside. "_This _way!"

He was yanked out into the rapidly flowing, ice cold water. Objects in the water battered at him. He went down, completely over his head, and the kid grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled him back up. "Go!"

He'd dropped the sword. The sword!

"Kenshin's katana!"

"Forget the sakabatou!" The strange boy shouted over the scream of the wind and the pounding rain. The boy hauled in mercilessly along, in water that was swift as a river and up to his waist. It shoved him forward, away from the shore, inland.

There was a tree.

The other kid shoved him towards it, boosted him into the branches, and then scrambled up after.

"My grandfather's sword. I lost his sword!" He was terrified of the water, but he wanted to go back and look for it.

"Forget it! Keep climbing!" He said something else, but Aki didn't hear it -- the wind whipped his words away.

The water was boiling up below them. He scrambled up higher into the branches. The wind was merciless and icy cold; he found he was shivering. It whipped rain against him with painful force. He couldn't see. He could barely hear the other boy's words now -- the kid crouched behind him, feet braced in the branches, arms around him.

"Hold on!" The kid screamed in his ear.

The tree shuddered as something large struck it. The gaslights had gone out. He couldn't see anything except constant strobing lightning. The fury of the storm was growing my the minute.

A board slammed into them, nearly knocking him free. The other kid, apparently uninjured, grabbed him in an impossibly strong grasp. "Hold on! Hold on!"

He whimpered and wrapped his arms around the branch and clung tightly to it. There wasn't anything to do but _hold on_. The other boy, behind him, was sheltering from the worst of the flying debris ... he heard him grunt when something smacked into him.

"Hold on," the kid screamed. "Just hold on ..."

--

Ren and Aki had not returned.

Kaoru paced restlessly, peering out occasionally through a crack in the house's shutters. She couldn't see a thing but the rain, pelting the house with howling fury. It was pitch black outside, even though dawn had to be very close. The storm had raged all night.

Kiki sobbed. "Ren. Aki. Ren. Aki."

"They'll be okay," Kaoru said, uncertainly. She hoped they'd found shelter.

--

It seemed like he'd been clinging to the branch for hours when Aki realized he could see, dimly. The wind was less; it still pelted him with stinging raindrops, but there was no longer any large debris in it.

He lifted his head up from the branches, and wiped saltwater spray from his eyes -- the floodwaters were from the bay and the wind had whipped whitecaps in the streets. Below, now, there was only mud and puddles.

He looked around for the other boy ... he was gone.

_He must have falling during the night ... I never even felt him go ..._

Panicked, he looked about for the other kid -- and there _was _a body wrapped around the base of the tree. He could see it now. But it was adult sized.

He scrambled down, landing in knee deep, stinking mud. Though he knew the man was dead, he pushed him over onto his back anyway. "Sir ...?"

The man's features were familiar.

He started to cry. Great, gulping sobs.

"Aki."

It was the other child. He had the sword in one hand.

"He ... he ... my father ..."

"Kenshin told me once that we cannot change the past. We can only live for the future." The other boy held the sword out to him with both hands.

Aki did not want to take it. Suddenly it was a vile thing ... if only he'd listened to his father's cries to stop! Tears streamed freely down his cheeks. He shook his head in silent refusal to take the sakabatou.

"This sword symbolizes _life_." The child continued to hold it out. "It was meant never to take a life. You have tarnished the meaning of the blade, by valuing the sword over your life, and that of your father."

"I didn't mean to ... I didn't think ... _Father_."

"He was a hard man, but he loved you. Take the sword. And remember this day. The sword will be your burden to bear, from this day forward."

He took it with shaking hands. _Father. He looked down at the corpse in the street. When he looked back up, the boy was gone. In his place, granny Kaoru was running up the road towards him. He realized she'd been shouting his name for at least a minute._

_She grabbed him, and wrapped him in a hug. "We were afraid you were dead!" _

_"Father's gone."_

_She just held him tighter. "It'll be okay. It'll be okay."_

_But he didn't think it would ever be okay again._

_-- _


	93. Chapter 93

Author's note: FFnet keeps stripping out my formating tags, I'm not sure why, when I post fic. It's really getting annoying.

--

_He stood in the window, wearing only a pair of worn hakama. The scars on his arms and chest gleamed whitely in the horizontal dawn light, and his wiry muscles stood out in sharp relief. Kenshin turned to her, when she made a small noise of appreciation at the sight of him, and his eyes suddenly lit and smoldered as he looked at her. A smile touched his lips -- a true smile, not the look of faux innocence that he used to hide his real nature. His hands dropped to the hakama's tie ..._

"Mama," Kenji's voice jolted her right out of the pleasant daydream. He then said something in English that she didn't have a prayer of following. Unlike Kenshin, her grasp of the English language was still fairly basic. Kenji was completely fluent.

"In Japanese," she said, patiently.

"Sorry, mother," he switched to Japanese easily. "Are you okay? You had the most far-away look on your face."

She realized she'd been standing in the window of Yahiko's house for a rather long while, staring at nothing, while Kenji and Shinya sorted through Yahiko's belongings behind her. They were making three groups of items: to keep, to give away, and to sell. She wasn't helping -- she'd planned to, but couldn't seem to stay focused. She'd started out worrying about Aki and Kiki, and had somehow let her mind wander to home, and Kenshin, and how very much she longed for him.

"I was just thinking of your father." Kaoru sighed. After a moment, she admitted, "I miss him."

Decades of marriage and yet Kenshin still had the ability to make her daydream. She was so very, very lucky -- and she knew it.

_Kiki lost her husband. I can't imagine losing Kenshin. I can't even begin to imagine how much it would hurt._

_Someday he'll lose me. I don't want him to hurt that way._

It was awful to think about-- Kenshin's love for her was something she had absolute faith in. She was the center of his universe, and someday, she'd hurt him by leaving. And then he would be alone and adrift without her. She knew it, and when her thoughts turned towards that, she despaired at the unfairness of it all.

Kenji said quietly, "Are you okay? You're always a million miles away. We're worried about you."

She realized her mind had wandered again, and forced herself to focus on the present. On Kenji. Who was frowning at her.

Kaoru stammered a bit, unsettled by the direction her thoughts had taken. "I'm-I'm going to go home after Ren's funeral. There's a boat going to Hawai'i and then San Diego next week. I can get to San Francisco from San Diego overland -- there's a train. The boat's not one of Jessica's, but it's a good boat, and Big Aki knows the owners. He says it's a safe boat, and an experienced captain." She hesitated. "I'm tired, Kenji. I want to go home."

"Home is California?" He seemed disappointed, somehow. She thought he wanted her to consider the Marshall estate home.

She shook her head. "Home is your father."

Kenji was quiet for a moment. It was his turn to stare off into space. "I miss him too."

"He misses you." She rested a hand on his forearm.

"I don't like the thought of you traveling alone such a long way." Kenji pursed his lips together in an unhappy frown.

She lifted the hand off his arm and brought it back down in a stinging slap. "I was traveling alone before you were born, Kenji. And also fighting ninjas and yakuza. I think I can handle a boat and train ride."

He rubbed his wrist, where she'd swatted him. "But Mama ..."

"Mama, mama. Don't 'Mama' me. I'll be fine."

He frowned at her. But he apparently knew better than to argue; he didn't say anything.

* * *

"I can't do it!"

Yukio sat in the chair, rocking back and forth, arms hugging himself. "I can't do it!"

He sounded panicked. Terrified, really.

Melody sat quietly, waiting for him to finish. Telling him to 'calm down' or 'don't be childish' made him worse. It was as if he couldn't stop the outbursts of emotions -- as if something had been broken inside him. What would be a minor irritation to a normal man was now a raging disaster to him. And telling him to calm down only made it worse, because he couldn't calm down, and that frustrated him, and the sense of frustration would rapidly escalate into anger.

She'd figured that out within the first few days. Now, four weeks into his recovery, she'd perfected the art of sitting quietly and waiting for him to control himself.

"Oh... okay." He gulped down a ragged breath. "I'm okay."

She nodded at the homework. It was an English assignment -- the class was reading Julius Caeser. The meltdown had been caused by a word he didn't understand; she'd handed him a dictionary to look it up (she didn't know the meaning of the word either) and he'd collapsed into tears.

"Cautelous ..." He said with deep, ragged breath. She could see he was struggling for control. He flipped through the dictionary, using the thumb of his ravaged right hand to flip pages. He squinted through the new spectacles that had proven necessary, and deciphered, "Un... untrustworthy."

"Great."

"So they're untrustworthy ..." He frowned. She saw the crease between his eyebrows deepening, and saw a burst of anger was building. Once, he would have found this assignment very easy. Yukio had been privately tutored since he'd been in diapers.

She reached around him and picked the book up. "Let's act it out."

"Huh?"

"Act it out. C'mon. I'm Brutus, you're Lucius ... I'll do the other characters as well."

"Oh."

She actually knew this scene fairly well, and handed the book back to him. With a great deal of enthusiasm, in the deepest voice she could manage -- which was about one note below a soprano -- she declared, "What, Lucius, Ho! I cannot, by progress by the stars ..." And she shaded her eyes and stared up at the ceiling, "Give guess how near to day. Lucius, I say! I would it were my fault to sleep so soundly. When, Lucius, when? Awake, I say! What, Lucius!"

He stared at her. Then he started giggling. "You sound like my dad when you pitch your voice that way."

"C'mon, your turn."

He took a deep breath and declared, in a much-more-effectively-deepened man's voice, "Call'd you, my lord?"

She continued, acting the part out with pantomime. Sometimes, they had to repeat a scene. But she saw the light go on behind his eyes. He was getting it. Despite her rather laughable attempts at sounding like a guy.

An hour later, they'd finished the scene. Grinning, he turned to answer the questions that the teacher had sent him. She helped him there, too, though he found answering the questions easier now that he'd seen and heard the scene.

* * *

Kenshin couldn't sleep -- a common complaint, these days. He missed Kaoru's presence. Even when they weren't sharing a bed, the knowledge that she was just a room away was comforting. He wasn't sure what was worse -- the selfish fact that he simply missed her on a physical and emotional level both, or that he was worried about her. She'd cabled word of Ren's death, and the circumstances behind it. He knew his wife well enough to have been struck by the fact that it could have just as easily have been her dead in the mud.

He couldn't protect her when she was half a world away.

Wearily, he finally got up and walked down the stairs, where he was unsurprised to find that Melody was up. A pot of tea steamed beside her, and she had her nose in a book.

"Hello, Ken-nii." She glanced up. He'd asked her to start calling him Ken-nii the week before; it felt right. He truly liked her. "Bad dreams?"

He shook his head. Dreams required sleeping. "Bad imagination."

"Mmm. Well, I just have a sick stomach." She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "I thought it was supposed to be morning sickness, not middle-of-the-night sickness."

"Do you need me to get you some bismuth?" He was worried about her. She was discrete about her stomach troubles, but he knew she'd been missing sleep, and not just because of bad dreams. When he had worked for Megumi, he had known women to become quite ill with persistent nausea during pregnancy.

"No," she sighed, and tucked a used envelope into the pages of the book she was reading, to save her place.

He tilted his head sideways and read: Julius Caeser on the spine. "Shakespeare?"

"Do you like the bard?"

He shrugged, vaguely embarrassed. "I've seen a few plays. The language -- it is hard."

"Oh."

Incomprehensible, is how I found it, in all truth. He'd tried to read Romeo and Juliet once, but had found the language utterly impossible to understand. Basic English, he could puzzle out, but not four hundred year old poetry about a culture he still found mystifying at times. When they'd seen the play at a theater in London, Yukio had whispered translations to him. And he had then been appalled by the people who found the whole mess of a love affair romantic.

Suicide after one's teenage lover died due to your actions? It struck a bit too close to home.

Oblivious to his ambiguous feelings, she said cheerfully, "I'm helping Yukio with his class assignments on it. I love Shakespeare. My father and I made a point of seeing the plays wherever we were." She hesitated. "Ken-nii, you asked me what I would answer if Yukio asked me to marry him."

"Aaa?"

In a small voice she said, "I ... don't think I'd say yes, right now."

He wasn't surprised. He thought she was wise. But he was a bit disappointed for Yukio's sake; Yukio would blossom in the partnership with such a woman as this one.

"He cannot help the outbursts. I know this. But I do not want to spend the rest of my life as a target of such rage and grief." She wouldn't meet Kenshin's eyes. "I do not want my child to grow up around that, either. Better we be alone, and poor, than live with that."

He nodded. He had been the target of his fair share of rages from Yukio; they disturbed him. She was correct in that they would be very hard on a growing child to endure. "You are wise, Melody, beyond your years."

"If ... damnit, he was everything I wanted." She wouldn't meet his eyes, still. Her voice was small, her shoulders hunched.

Kenshin said quietly, "Please give him time, at least, to grow into himself."

"I ... I like Michael McHenry. I was thinking of asking him to help me find a husband. I know you want me to take Yukio home, but ..."

"Kaoru can escort him home. It's not huge problem."

Except that I was looking forward some time with just her and me, and it will take her a few months to travel to England and back. The thought was bitter and full of despair. Was it too much to ask that he have just a little time with Kaoru?

He hesitated, then added, "However, I do not like McHenry."

He didn't think he could tell her why, either.

She glanced at him. "He's a nice man!"

"He not honest." Kenshin wondered how much he could tell her. He felt no obligation to protect McHenry and his secret society, but, on the other hand, he didn't want to make unnecessary trouble for anyone. McHenry claimed that the Watchers had been around for centuries. That meant they weren't going to go away. Exposing them promised to bring bloodshed to men who were scholars -- albeit annoyingly spylike ones. He had no doubt that some Immortals would object with deadly force to being Watched.

She cocked her head sideways and regarded him curiously. "So what do you know that you're not saying? I had wondered why he stopped coming around."

With some discomfiture, he remembered that Melody didn't miss much and was alarmingly bold. He hesitated, "Et-to ... I caught him in a lie, Melody, about his past. It make me unwilling to trust."

"What sort of lie?

Damnit, she's not going to back down.

Some of his concern must have reached his eyes. She snorted a laugh. "You're a terrible actor, Ken-nii. Give."

He sighed. She wouldn't rest until she knew the whole story, and he was afraid that she'd go ask McHenry for the truth. While it would be interesting to find out what sort of truth -- or lie -- McHenry gave her, that could also be dangerous for her. He bowed his head in assent. "Okay. But do not tell anyone else."

"Okay."

And he began to tell her what he'd learned from McHenry -- that McHenry was a spy for a secret organization that studied Immortals. He was surprised at how easy it was to talk to her -- and how much he trusted her to react appropriately to this news. It made him uneasy to share this with her because she was so young ... but on the other hand, he'd been younger when he had become a hitokiri, and he had been trusted with far more.

She wasn't a child, he decided. Young, yes, but not a child -- and she had given him every indication he could trust and treat her as another adult.

* * *

Kaoru leaned on the railing of the ship. It was late; the sun had set hours ago. A full moon cast sharp shadows across the deck. She could feel the steady rumble of the steamer's engines through the soles of her shoes, and the salt air was crisp and clean.

Three days of travel; twenty-two more to San Diego. And then there was at least one or two more to travel overland to San Francisco via train.

Big Aki had been correct that the Swan Lady was a good ship. She was brand new; she'd been commissioned less than six months before. She was big and gleaming and crewed by an efficient and reasonably respectable group of men. Kaoru was not the only passenger by far on the ship, though she was the only Japanese. Most of the rest seemed to be a mix of Europeans traveling for adventure or business, though there were four Chinese picture-brides sharing a cabin. They never came out, and they spoke about as much Japanese as she spoke Chinese, which was to say, none.

With a great deal of effort, and a bit of laughter on all parts, she had managed to communicate with them using a combination of kanji and pantomime. While Japanese kanji were not the same as Chinese characters, they were close enough to find out that all four were meeting husbands.

"Mrs. Himura," the tobacco-harshened voice of the first mate cut through the night air. And he sounded mad. "Got a second?"

She turned around, surprised at the irritation in his voice. A cigarette glowed between his lips. And he had a thin, tall young boy gripped in one hand; the boy was twisting a bit, half-heartedly trying to get away.

"Stowaway." The man elaborated. "I'm half minded to throw him off the boat, but 'e says he knows you."

She blinked, and stepped closer. Then she pursed her lips into distinct frown of displeasure. This was no boy at all. "Raeko."

Raeko met her gaze with a look of pure defiance. "You can't make me go back!" She declared in Japanese.

Kaoru sighed. "He's not going to turn the ship around. He's talking about throwing you off the ship."

She did not think that the first mate was serious about the threat. However, he was very angry. She could see it in his expression.

"I can pay my fare now!" Raeko said, desperately. "Tell him I'll pay!"

"Be glad he thinks you're a boy or he might try to get the fee out of you other ways." Kaoru replied, shaking her head. "Stay a boy for now."

She switched to English. "He's son of friend. He says he pay. Stowed away so I not stop from coming."

The man gave Raeko an irritated shove in Kaoru's direction. Kaoru neatly sidestepped Raeko rather than catching her; Raeko went sprawling on the deck. She then turned and swiftly smacked Raeko upside the head as she was getting back up. "What were you thinking?"

"Owe, Auntie Kaoru! Mama's always yelling at me. She says she's tired of me running around like a boy." Raeko snorted. "I wish I was a boy."

"So you ran away because she was yelling? Did you think I wouldn't yell? I can guarantee I can yell a lot louder than your mother!"

"I ran away because I was tired of listening to her," Raeko clarified, sharp words cutting across Kaoru's tirade. She stood back up and rubbed her skull where Kaoru had thumped her.

Kaoru regarded the girl unhappily. At fourteen, Raeko was tall, rail-thin, and looked a lot more like her father than Megumi. That resemblance was all in the expression. And the attitude. Kaoru remembered Sano telling her he had been nine when he'd run away from home, and she suspected his reasons had been very similar, though mixed with a desire to fight for his side of the war. Neither of them liked to be confined, however, or told what to do.

At least Raeko could easily pass for a boy; with her height, and the fact that she was flat as a board, it was easy enough. She was wearing boy's trousers and a boy's shirt, and her hair was chopped off above her ears. It had been longer at the funeral; she'd cut it recently. Kaoru knew that Megumi had been trying to get Raeko to grow her hair out, to be more feminine. Now, however, her hair was ragged and messy and cowlicked and held back from her eyes with a strip of cloth -- and her father's hair had stood on end in the exact same way.

Well, if they thought Raeko was a young teenage boy, this would make relations with the crew much easier.

Kaoru reached out and grabbed Raeko by the ear. If she wanted to be a boy, Kaoru would damn well treat her like one. "You're staying in my cabin. You will work the entire time you are here or I'll have the captain whip your butt bloody. You think your mother's mean? You've never met me."

"Owe!" Raeko tried to pull away. Kaoru, who had raised multiple boys who were all taller than she was, could not be dislodged. Kaoru started for her quarters, towing Raeko along with her.

"Let me go!"

"You are a stupid child." Kaoru informed her, in a rising crescendo of anger. "You could have been raped. Or injured. You could have been arrested. You embarrass your mother with your behavior. You make her cry -- I've seen her cry because of you. I think even your father would be humiliated to have such a hooligan as a girl!"

Actually, she wasn't so sure on that point. But it was an argument she was willing to use, and she figured Sano would forgive her for it.

Behind her, the first mate said something in English. She only caught, "... Tough broad."

Kaoru turned around quickly to face him. Still pissed, she only said, "That correct. Raeko need learn manners."

Then she kept an angry scolding tirade up all the way to her cabin. Megumi had to be absolutely terrified about her daughter's fate, and there would be no way to contact her until they reached Hawai'i, well over a week away.


	94. Chapter 94

Author's Notes:

I need to apologize, and explain, about the length of time between updates.

As many of you are aware from my livejournal (.com) I have some health issues. I need to prioritize and decide what's most important to me -- writing for me is physically painful, and I can only take so much before the pain exceeds the joy I get from it. Because of this, I want to focus on my original fiction, and the blogging that I love, because both, potentially, can lead to income.

Make no mistake: I love fanfiction. It's pure entertainment for me. It's what I do for _fun_ when I'm sick from the meds, or just plain sick, and I need an escape. I will always need that escape. And I will always write fanfiction for entertainment. But it won't be the center of my writing universe anymore ... I have other priorities.

On the other hand, you guys can expect to see some of my original writing in the near future, published on the 'web. Watch my livejournal for details. (Short teaser -- one cowritten fantasy romance with, and one "ordinary" romance novel. The fantasy romance has a beauty and the beast theme, and also, a love story that spans centuries. The romance novel has horses in it.)

----------

Kenshin knew the quiet aura that was Grace now; when she approached the front door, he rose from the kitchen table and went to answer it. She knocked, and he opened the door a second later.

"Good afternoon, Shin-san." She blinked at him, clearly a little surprised by the quick response.

"Come in, Grace-dono." He gestured for her to enter. She had a stack of schoolbooks in her arms. Those would be Yukio's homework, he assumed. She'd been bringing his assignments by every few days. It had taken some pressure -- including some political pressure from Grace's ambassador grandfather -- to convince the school district to allow Yukio to complete his assignments at home. However, Kenshin knew his son couldn't handle a classroom right now and he saw no reason for him to fall behind if he could do the work at home.

From upstairs, as proof of Kenshin's concerns about Yukio, an argument was in full swing between Melody and his son.

"Will YOU SIT STILL!" Melody's bellow -- it could only be described as a bellow -- nearly shook the house.

Kenshin winced. Then flinched further, when Yukio responded with, "FUCK THAT!" His son sounded desperate, scared, and furiously, irrationally angry.

"If you're going to swear at me, I'm done!" Melody sounded like she was at the absolute end of her rope. Yukio had been difficult all day, though to be fair, he'd also been in a lot of pain. They'd cut back his laudanum again, and between the withdrawals and the pain from his burns and his shattered ankle, he was not in a good mood.

"You're only half done!" Yukio wailed.

The argument had something to do with a haircut to neaten up his son's singed locks. Kenshin closed his eyes. Melody had probably been overly optimistic about Yukio's mood when she'd proposed it. He said to Grace, "My son is not himself. I apologize for him, that you have heard this ..."

Grace glanced upwards, then lowered her eyes. "He did poorly on his assignments. I would like to tutor him, if you are willing."

"You may find him a rather difficult student." Kenshin pinched the bridge of his nose. He had a headache. The thought of quiet, polite, well-bred Grace dealing with his son was embarrassing. Melody, at least, could give as good as she got -- and had the internal fortitude to not take any of it personally. Most of the time. Melody sounded abjectly frustrated right now, but he knew that she would cool off within minutes once she had a few moments to collect herself. However, while Melody was fairly well educated, Yukio's math and science classes were well beyond what she knew. Grace was taking the same or similar classes and was probably better able to help his son.

"I am very patient, Shin-san," she murmured.

Kenshin regarded her thoughtfully now. She was correct; Grace fully lived up to her name. Patience was something she had in abundance. As compared to Melody, who was now flouncing down the stairs, she was a veritable saint.

Melody saw Grace and came to a quick halt halfway down. Kenshin didn't miss the coolness of Melody's greeting when she said, "Good afternoon, Grace."

Pure jealousy, Kenshin thought, amused despite himself. Suddenly, he found himself smiling as he remembered another spitfire of a young woman, her cultured rival, and the young man they'd both coveted. He hid his grin with a cough.

"Good afternoon, Melody." Grace smiled at her. "I brought Yukio his homework. Is he fit for visitors?"

Melody ran a hand through her hair, raking out tangles. Kenshin noted she looked exhausted -- he knew she'd been up half the night, vomiting, because he'd heard her through the house's thin walls. "Not particularly, but he'd probably appreciate the company even if he doesn't act like it."

Grace nodded. "Thank you, Melody."

Melody watched Grace climb the stairs, then said with some concern, "He might throw things at her."

Kenshin sighed and sat down on one of the benches that lined the wall. "Probably."

----------

Yukio stared at himself in the mirror. Half his hair was cut short, the rest growing longer, singed and tangled. It looked awful.

He closed his eyes, and swallowed down his embarrassment. Melody just infuriated him, sometimes ... he loved her, he knew he did, but sometimes he couldn't help yelling at her. He'd been doing that a lot lately. He knew it was wrong. He _knew _it. But every time he saw her, the impotent, useless frustration rose and spilled out in angry tirades.

He wanted to be well. He wanted his foot healed, and his burned shoulder to be well, and he wanted to be able to think clearly and just, well, be himself. He wanted to impress her. And he got so frustrated ...

A soft knock on the open bedroom door. He looked up, expecting his father.

Grace said diffidently, "Melody said you might like some company. I brought your homework."

"Please go away." He was perilously close to lashing out at Grace. Melody was one thing ... she could take it, and return it back to him. She was _safe_. He seriously didn't want to snap at Grace. Grace was different. Grace was graceful, and sweet, and kind.

She said nothing, just stood there.

"Please."

"What happened?"

"I lost my temper." He shivered.

"She was cutting your hair?"

This was probably obvious, since he was seated in front of the room's mirror, and there was a pair of scissors on the dresser next to him. And half his hair was cut, and the other half still a mess. He also needed a shave desperately, but couldn't manage a razor.

"Yukio-san, I'll go if you want ... do you want me to go?"

He closed his eyes. "No. But I'm not real good company right now."

When he opened them, she was standing closer to him. Quietly, she set a couple of textbooks and his homework down on the dresser. "You've a calculus paper due tomorrow. Do you want to go over it with me?"

"Umm." Again he closed his eyes.

Her hand touched his hair. Gently, she smoothed the uncut side. "Or this?"

He flinched -- the burn on the side of his face was tender, even though she'd avoided touching it. Anger bubbled up; he bit it back with a herculean force of effort because he could envision her eyes growing wide and her lips quivering and then tears coming if he shouted at her. It took strength he didn't know he possessed to keep from swearing at her.

"Sorry." She withdrew her hand.

"It's okay. I guess I was awful to Melody and she got mad and left. It hurts ..." he waved with his mangled hand at the burns on his face. He could see himself in the mirror; the salve that Melody had smeared on them was shiny, greasy. Petrolatum and something else, he wasn't sure what. Some herb that Kenshin's doctor friend in Japan had recommended. "And I started yelling. I get so mad sometimes ..."

She picked the scissors up, and the comb. "I cut my father's hair sometimes. If it's okay, I could try to do yours."

He nodded.

Very gently, and with infinite patience, she began to pick the tangles out of his hair. He'd spent a lot of time laying down, and he had rather bad bed head, on top of singed bits. Her fingers were cool, and nimble, and she took great pains not to brush his burned jaw again with her hand. Conversationally, after a moment, she said, "Your hair's so thick. Boys are so lucky; they always get the best hair."

"Until they get old and go bald."

She giggled. "This is true."

"How's school going?" He remembered she had been having trouble with bullies.

She was quiet, for a moment, and then said, "I wish you were there with me."

"Well I can't be!" The anger rose, and he shouted so loud he made himself jump.

She stopped cutting his hair, for a moment. He knew Melody would have come back with some cutting remark in response. Likely, "Not with that temper, no. You need to control it." And then they would have been arguing, even though he knew he needed to control it -- he just couldn't figure out how. It seemed impossible to keep the angry words in.

Grace simply said, "I'm sorry if I upset you."

He felt guilty. It _wasn't _her fault. She was a target of his anger, but not the cause of it. It was terrible, shameful, for him to scream at her.

Tears began to run down his nose. He hiccupped back a sob. It was terrible, and unmanly, and he _couldn't help it. _

"Don't cry!" She sounded alarmed. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to upset you! I can go, if you want ... I just wanted to help, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry ..."

"Not your fault ..." He shook his head. "Don't feel ... feel bad. It's not your fault!"

"He can't help it." Melody's voice came from the doorway. He wasn't aware that she had been back there.

"Get out!" He didn't want Melody here. He'd scream at her and he was tired of screaming.

"It is not appropriate for Grace to be alone with you in private." Melody's voice was patient, if a bit chiding. "I may be ruined, but there's no reason for her reputation to suffer."

"Oh." He couldn't stop the tears. He hadn't even thought of that ... he was terrible, for not even having thought of that. And he also winced at Melody's casual reference to herself as 'ruined.'

Grace giggled. "It's okay. He couldn't do anything to me if he wanted to."

"That wouldn't stop the old biddies from gossiping, and we have one right across the street who's most irritating. Yukio can't help his tears. It's because he hurt his head. He says things and does things and he can't help it." Melody spoke matter-of-factly, and it made Yukio flinch anyway.

"I'm _trying_," he insisted.

Grace started cutting his hair again. Her hands were steady and cool against the back of his neck. "My father told me about it, Yukio. He talked to Mr. Shin."

He realized there were still tears streaming down his cheeks and blinked hard. Gods, he was so embarrassed.

"Take a deep breath," she said, calmly.

Yukio did -- her voice was so calm, so steady. It compelled him to listen to her.

"Again," she said, after he'd let it out slowly.

After several deep breaths, he found he was calmer. He sighed. "I'm sorry."

"I'm done here." Grace had finished trimming his hair just above the collar of his shirt. "What do you think, Melody?"

"Looks good."

"I was going to help him with his schoolwork -- perhaps it would be better if we moved downstairs," she suggested. "For propriety's sake. That way you can work in the kitchen -- I imagine you're about to start dinner -- and I can work with Yukio."

"I've been helping him with his homework, though I'll confess some of what he's studying is beyond me," Melody said, the last part a bit reluctantly. "And K... Mr. Shin said he'd fix dinner."

"He cooks?" Grace blinked, sounding dumbfounded.

"Rather well," Melody giggled. "He's an interesting man, isn't he?"

-------------

Kenshin heard three sets of footsteps -- two belonging to the girls, and one hopping, uneven stride that was his son's -- exit the upstairs bedroom. He guessed they were coming downstairs, which was good. It was probably depressing for Yukio to be confined to his bedroom all day.

He considered helping them, then decided against it. Both girls were taller than he was. Melody was almost as tall as Yukio. They were capable of getting Yukio downstairs by themselves. Besides, Yukio wasn't exactly an invalid anymore; his fever was gone and his strength was returning. It would do him good to exert himself a bit, even if it was by hopping on one foot. Coddling him would not help him.

He fiddled a bit with the gas stove, turning the burner up to boil a pot of water. He was just getting the rice out of the cupboard when he sensed a very familiar, very welcome, _ki _approaching the house. Kenshin dropped the bag of rice in his haste to run to the door, then agilely he caught it before it hit the ground. He set the burlap bag down on the table, and headed to the door with long, eager strides.

When he opened the door, she was just reaching for the knob. Kaoru blinked at him for a moment, surprised that he'd met her at the door, then said, "Ken ... shin ..." and he was folding her into his arms and hugging her close. Gods, it felt so very good to hold her. She was safe, and home, and _here _where he could protect her, and cherish her. He felt a sudden sense of completeness, as if a missing part of his soul had slipped back into place.

"Kaoru," he held her tightly for a moment, before, reluctantly, letting her step back. There was someone behind her -- he shot the person a quick look, and then recognized, belatedly, Sano's daughter who was now wearing a short haircut. Raeko very much looked like a young, skinnier, shorter version of her father. Even had she been dressed as a girl she would not have been particularly feminine; with boy's clothing on, she looked like she was a few months shy of growing whiskers and an adam's apple.

"Raeko ..." he hesitated, then went with her appearance and said, with a teasing grin, "Raeko-kun, welcome. I wasn't aware you were coming back with my wife."

_-Kun_, not -_dono_. If she was going to hide the fact that she was female, he'd humor her.

"Neither was I. She stowed away." Kaoru sounded sour. "I sent Megumi a cable in Hawai'i. She responded back that we should keep Raeko for awhile."

Well, he had promised her father he'd look out for her. Besides, he liked the kid. He'd always had a soft spot for tomboys. And Megumi had expressed large amounts of frustration with the girl when he'd seen her last. It might just be time for her to make her way in the world, and leave home. "Well, in that case, welcome, Raeko-kun. While you're here, you shall be like one of my daughters."

She bowed. "Thank you, Himura-san."

He wondered at the coolness but didn't get a chance to ask her anything before Yukio shouted, "Mommmmmy!"

Yukio was laughing -- a silly, unrestrained, not-quite-normal giggle that had started right after the rages had begun.

Kaoru sucked a sharp breath in. Kenshin turned and saw what she saw. Yukio, skinny from illness, a burn on the side of his face, his hand mangled, and his ankle splinted. He was leaning on Melody's shoulder, and looked obviously unwell. He was pale, drawn, with bright red spots on both cheeks and dark circles under his eyes.

Then his wife hurried to their son and hugged him briefly and said in Japanese, "I was worried about you. It's good to see you're up and around."

Yukio's eyes brimmed with tears. Kenshin held his breath, hoping he wasn't about to have another emotional outburst. However, when she released him, he simply waved his bandaged hand around. "I can't manage crutches with this hand. I'm not exactly _around_."

"And Melody-san, Grace-san." Kaoru smiled at them, a genuine, open smile. "I am glad you are helping my son."

-----------

Much later, there was laughter coming from downstairs -- and torrents of Japanese interspersed with English, as Grace, Yukio, Melody and Raeko played card games at the kitchen table. Kenshin, seated in the upstairs study, kept half an ear open for trouble from his son. However, it seemed that Yukio's bad day had turned much brighter. Socializing with the girls was helping him forget his pain.

Kaoru sat quietly in a chair by the window, staring out it at a late afternoon sky. She was too thin, and she kept rubbing the wrist she'd broken months before. It had healed with a knot on it -- not quite straight. He was happy that it had healed at all. Broken bones didn't always knit properly in the elderly. Was she old enough to be considered elderly? He wasn't sure, though there was more white than ever in her dark hair.

He said quietly, "I am glad you are home."

"This isn't home." She met his eyes, a frankly challenging glare. Then, abruptly, she looked down and away. Quietly, she said, "I don't know where home is. I thought Japan ... but Yahiko's family isn't mine. Japan is home, yet it is not. I ... I am without a home."

He rose from his own seat, and walked to her, and stood beside her. Outside, it was dark except for a pool of golden light under a streetlamp. After a moment, he said, "Listen."

Below, Yukio's voice carried through the air vents to the second floor:

"Melody, you need to let me win! I'm the invalid!"

Melody responded, "Well, I _tried _to let you win, but you're so awful it didn't work!"

"_Fuck _you!"

There was complete silence, from the girls. Kenshin could envision Melody's glare and Grace's blush at Yukio's outburst. Raeko, still oblivious to English profanity, would simply be confused by their reactions.

"Sorry." Yukio sounded abashed.

Kaoru said quietly, "He's not himself, is he?"

"No."

"I like Melody." Kaoru changed the subject without further comment on Yukio's problems. "And I like having children in the house."

"Do not mistake Melody for a child," Kenshin said, mildly. "The other three, yes. But not her."

"Grace is older." Grace was sixteen. She had been born late in the fall, just after the season's cut off for school enrollment, so while she was in the same grade as Yukio, she was several months older.

"Grace has lived a sheltered, gentle life. Melody ... Melody's much like Yahiko. She became an adult too soon."

Kaoru's fingers touched his wrist. "Like you, as well."

He couldn't argue that point. "Aaa."

"What are you going to do about Melody's property?" Kaoru didn't even ask _if _he would help. She rightly assumed he would.

"My solicitor has business in San Francisco in a month -- he cabled me from South America a few weeks ago. He's on his way. We plan to pay a visit to her guardian then, and wrest control from him. She has no desire to live there, so we will sell the farm and use the proceeds to buy her a house here in the city. She's thinking that she'd like to run a rooming house -- it would provide income to support her and the child while allowing her to stay with the baby during the day. I suggested she could work for Jessica and Kenji, but she wants independence, I think. She's had too many people fail her, in her life."

"You've mellowed in your old age." Kaoru frowned at him. "Once, you would have beaten his neighbors bloody and been done with it."

Kenshin eyed her. He didn't know if he should be amused or not. Finally, with an air of a bit of confession, he said, "That's an option I have not taken off the table. The man who ... hurt ... her. I am angry, for her."

"She plans to keep the baby, then?" Kaoru changed the subject. She was certainly not oblivious to his rage on Melody's behalf, and since she wasn't trying to discuss it, she certainly agreed with the sentiment. She'd known just how quietly furious he was before he'd said anything. She knew him -- knew his nature, knew his own history -- and knew how he would react. Speaking the words threatened to turn a cold, settled anger into real fury and he bit back any further comments on the matter. She didn't ask anything further, either, undoubtably having seen a bit of amber spark in his eyes.

He reflected that she'd mellowed too because once upon a time, Kaoru would have been on the next train East to Arizona with a bokken in her hand and revenge on her mind. It would have been an open question as to who would go after the man first. However, he simply nodded. "She says he's the only family she has. I wish ..." He sighed, and trailed off, then tried again only to find that he was physically unable to to speak his mind on this matter. "If ..."

"You really like her, don't you?" Kaoru said, quietly.

"She would be good for Yukio. I do not know if Yukio would be good for Melody, at this point." He found his words, finally. Speaking of Yukio and Melody together caused an unaccountable lump in his throat. He didn't quite understand it, except that it hurt his heart to think of their futures, both together and apart. Either way, there would be pain.

"You know the trouble that could cause them both."

"Aa." He folded his hands together behind his back and stared out the window. The sun was starting to slip below the horizon. He should drive Grace home soon, before her parents began to worry. Melody, Yukio and Raeko could come too; he suspected Raeko had never ridden in a motorcar before. Hopefully, she was less afraid of combustion engines than her father had been of steam engines.

Kenshin said quietly, after a moment of silence stretched between them, "Sometimes, love is worth any amount of danger and risk and personal sacrifice. I seem to remember a young woman who believed that when it came to this old warrior."

Kaoru giggled, sounding very much like that sixteen year old girl. If he'd glanced over at him, he knew she would have been blushing. Then she slipped her arms around his waist from behind and nuzzled his neck and said, "I've missed you so much."

The study had a locking door. Kenshin decided taking Grace home could wait a little while. He twisted around in his wife's arms and held her very close, kissed her deeply, and quietly showed her just how much he'd missed her.

Much later, they sat on the study's sofa together. Kaoru was curled against him, eyes half closed, drifting towards sleep. She was relaxed in his arms, one hand resting on his thigh, comfortable. He'd missed her so very much, and it felt so good just to hold her close.


	95. Chapter 95

Kaoru woke to a cold, empty bed, as she often had during her years of marriage. Even during those times when they'd shared covers at night, Kenshin did much of his brooding in the early morning hours and therefore it was not unusual for him to wake before the sun came up. She, on the other hand, was far less fond of cold predawn hours -- like now. He'd had a certain quiet broodiness about him before he'd gone to bed, and she was not surprised to find he had not stayed asleep.

Concerned, she wondered what was on his mind to make him stew now, or perhaps more precisely, she wondered what he was _most _agonized over: Yukio's injury, Yahiko's passing, fitting into the culture of this foreign land, or angst over things she didn't know about. After a moment of staring sleeplessly at the plaster bedroom ceiling she decided that she wouldn't rest until she knew, and slid out from under the covers. Barefoot despite the morning chill of the house, she padded down the stairs. The lights were turned off throughout the house except for one electric bulb that was lit on the back porch. However, she negotiated the darkness without flipping any switches as she didn't want to wake Yukio or Melody.

When she entered the kitchen, a quick glance at the clock on the wall told her it was just past three AM.

Kenshin had purchased the clock while she was gone. It was whimsical, with clockwork children that spun and danced every fifteen minutes. She thought the clock was very _Kenshin_ in its bright colors and silly whimsy.

Kaoru, suspecting Kenshin was outside, walked to the back door and peered out through the window inset in it. In Tokyo, his favorite brooding spot had been the engawa steps -- unless he was doing more serious brooding, such as before a battle. Then she would find him on the roof. In England, it had been in a gazebo in the garden close to the back door, or, sometimes, a branch in a towering, ancient oak on the grounds. He liked to be outside, but close enough to keep watch over the home's occupants.

As she'd guessed, her husband was seated on the porch, leaning against the railing. He had a cup of hot tea in his hands, and a serious expression on his face. His bangs, darker red in the yellow glow of the lightbulb than they were under the light of the sun, were just long enough to fall into his eyes. Except for the lack of a pony tail, and the fact that he was wearing a very westernized and very working class pair of denim dungarees, he looked exactly as he had when they'd met all those decades ago.

She missed seeing him in his hakama. He'd taken to wearing trousers even when training -- he said it was because that was what he was most likely to be wearing when he was Challenged. She still had the pair of hakama he'd worn so long ago in Tokyo, in a trunk in their bedroom. The fabric was faded and worn to near transparency, patched in a hundred places, and probably too small for him at the waist given that he _had _gained weight since then. He was thin now, but not rail skinny.

Kaoru peered through the door and noted that facing him, seated in a chair, Melody was clutching a similar steaming mug. That was a bit of a surprise, that she was up and speaking to Kenshin at this early hour.

For a moment, Kaoru's heart clenched into a jealous fist. Melody was young, and beautiful, with her blond curls and blue eyes and fair skin. Melody reminded Kaoru of a porcelain doll sometimes: ringlet curls and pale skin, with rosy cheeks and _youth_ to her benefit. And Kenshin was watching her with grave eyes. Their body language spoke of a connection between them; any woman could see it. Melody was relaxed, in a way that she was not around anyone else. Kenshin was very serious, and his focus was on her.

"Ken, I don't know what I want to do. And I can't sleep, thinking about it." She could hear Melody's words, faintly, through the door. "Maybe ... maybe with my money, I could find a husband. And then we wouldn't have to fight for my money. My property would legally come to us."

Kenshin sipped his tea. "I think idea to run inn is a good one, Melody-dono. You keep your child at your side. You able to earn good money. You not need marry; my lawyer, he says he get your money for you."

"Yukio said he wants to help me run it. The inn, I mean." Melody sighed audibly even to Kaoru's ears.

"But?" Kenshin prompted.

"But ... if he speaks to customers the way he speaks to me ..." Melody exhaled again, a deeper and more ragged sigh. "... He can't _help _it. The angry words, they just come out. What if he doesn't get better, Ken?"

_Ken_. Kaoru had heard the nickname for her husband before, of course, still, somehow, this young woman's use of it, bald of any honorifics, made her a little jealous. Sure, she'd been calling Kenshin by his first name, and without a honorific, since practically the first day they'd met. But he was a married man, and her husband, and for a moment she wanted to smack the girl for the presumption.

Kenshin ran a hand over his face. "I owe both you and my son an apology. If I had not been so careless ... If I had told him _no _and worked harder to protect him ..."

Melody shook her head. "What's done is done, Kenshin. You cannot blame yourself for this."

_But he will, _Kaoru thought -- and a small voice in her heart wondered if Kenshin shouldn't have some of the blame. She certainly would not have let Yukio go out hunting bad cops with a camera.

Kenshin sipped his tea, and said, "Also, you do not _need _my son. You run inn well on your own. But a husband is a partner, and would make things easy ...? Easier. Easier. Earning your own living never _easy_, but a husband should be someone you trust completely, and who helps you and supports you."

Kaoru closed her eyes, hearing Kenshin's words. She _did _trust him ... completely, totally, and without reservation. And he had always supported her, had always been there for her. And he would _be _there for her until the end of their lives. She knew that. Any jealousy she had towards Melody faded away.

Melody blew on her drink, then said, "I know you blame yourself for what happened to Yukio. But you can't let it weigh your heart down, Ken. You have to keep going forward, and doing the best that you can for people in the future." She dimpled suddenly. "I'm preaching to the choir, aren't I?"

Kenshin flashed her a sudden, bright, smile. "Aa. Thank you for reminding me of what you know me to believe in, Melody-dono." He pinched the bridge of his nose, though, and leaned his head back against the railing, and said in a far more pained voice as his smile faded, "Yukio wants to marry you. We've discussed this before. You should make a decision soon, however -- Yukio's probably going to ask you soon if you don't. It might be kindest to let him know now, if you intend to say _No_, rather than to let him ask you, because knowing my son he will do so publically and embarrass you both. You have many practical reasons for saying yes to him, and many reasons to say no."

"If I say 'yes' we might move away from here rather than run an inn." She propped her chin on her hand. "I become ... what? A wife to Yukio Himura, a respectable gentleman with a wealthy and respectable family. My child is raised with riches beyond anything I've ever known. Oh, my father was wealthy, Ken, but not like your family is. I call Lady Jessica Trevor _sister_ -- and I call Kenshin Himura _father_. And I have Yukio as my husband. And people will hate us simply for who we are, and the color of our skin."

At the word 'father' Kenshin shot her a quick look. Kaoru, despite her years at Kenshin's side, couldn't read his expression. However, she could certainly hear the tone of Melody's voice. It was odd -- wistful, perhaps. She wasn't sure what Melody thought of having Kenshin as her father-in-law.

Melody's eyes closed briefly. "I love your son, Kenshin. Tantrums and all. You should have seen him last night, playing poker ... that was the Yukio I know, and have come to love. He made us laugh, and he only ... he only had two attacks of anger the whole night."

"How did he do at the poker?" Kenshin asked, with interest. Kaoru also was curious, because her son had been quite good at card games and _Go _in the past.

"Badly." Melody snorted. "Grace, on the other hand, could make a living at it."

"_Grace_?" Kenshin seemed surprised by this, though Kaoru suspected his astonishment was feigned. She could see a hint of a sparkle in his eyes that said he'd known all along that Grace would be good at cards.

"She's got a head for numbers." Melody shrugged. "And she's more than she seems."

Melody hesitated for a moment, while Kenshin sat quietly -- Kaoru recognized Kenshin in _listening _mode. On the surface, this was a casual conversation. However, she knew her husband well enough to know that he, too, was often more than he seemed. Melody had been through hell over the last few months. Kenshin was probably giving her the listening ear that she very well needed.

Kaoru relaxed a little. No matter what Melody thought or might want, Kenshin was loyal beyond reproach to his wife. Melody might have a bit of a crush on her potential suitor's father, but Kenshin simply saw her as a young woman in need of help. And part of the reason that Kaoru loved Kenshin so very much was that he could never turn his back on anyone who needed help.

Finally, Melody said, "Grace likes Yukio a lot."

"What do you think of Grace?" Kenshin's voice was steady, even, and a little curious.

"She's ..." Melody hesitated. "She's never done anything bad. But she's n-not ... I don't think she's a good match for Yukio, I just can't say _w-why_."

Kenshin suggested an answer to Melody's statement, "Perhaps you think she doesn't love him."

Melody hunched her shoulders as if she'd been struck. Kaoru thought, _But you do, kiddo. _Melody might be attracted to Kenshin -- many women and quite a few men were -- but by her body language and reactions, Kaoru thought the young blond woman truly loved her son. She felt any remaining jealousy leave her, as she watched them. She wasn't very threatened by people who were simply attracted to Kenshin; she found it flattering. Kenshin could have had his pick of many women, but he'd chosen her and she was completely confident that he was utterly loyal to her.  
_  
_Still, Melody said sturdily, "A marriage isn't just about love, Ken. And love can come later."

"Aaa." Kenshin agreed, with a flash of his teeth in a bright smile. Now he was gently and subtly teasing her. "That it true. Perhaps it is you think Grace _never _love Yukio like you love Yukio."

Melody raked a frustrated hand through her hair. "They'd be a good match. When he gets ... when he gets angry, she just looks like she's about to cry, and he apologizes. With me, he just gets angrier and angrier ... and I can't help yelling at him. I get frustrated. And then we're screaming at each other."

Kenshin confessed quietly, "I yell at him too, Melody. For the same reasons."

_Kenshin yelled at Yukio_? Kaoru thought, in shock. She'd never seen her husband lose his temper at the children. He was almost infinitely patient. And quite honestly, she'd never seen Yukio do anything to make Kenshin that angry before. More often than not, when Yukio had been younger, Kenshin had meted out discipline to the boy with a straight and stern face, but then had dissolved into laughter later, out of his son's earshot, when he related whatever stupidly mischievous stunt the boy had pulled _this _time to her.

Kaoru, on the other hand, had never been shy about yelling at the kids. She didn't fault Kenshin for his calm and steady way of disciplining them, though. It was simply who he was. He never said much about her temper, either, except to tease her about it sometimes.

Kenshin said quietly, "It's because we love him, that he frustrates us so badly. Grace does not take it personally, because she is not attached to him, as we are. But even if she did love him she would be more tolerant than you, that is true."

The young woman frowned. "That makes me feel a lot better."

"The question is, does he need tolerance? I know I am a better man for my wife's lack thereof." Kenshin flashed a quick, blinding smile and glanced in Kaoru's direction. Their eyes met through the glass. She was unsurprised to realize he knew she was lurking, even though this was he first time he'd looked in her direction. Kenshin's ability to sense the presence others was almost supernatural in nature. Her assumption from the beginning was that she was not eavesdropping on him, because that was impossible to do.

It suddenly occurred to her that she was being rude, however, because Melody didn't know she was there. She pushed the door open, causing Kenshin to simply look up and Melody to scramble to her feet. A bit to her surprise, Melody stammered, "Mrs. Himura -- I, we ... nothing's going on here! We were just talk ..."

Kenshin, still seated, said calmly, "If Kaoru thought there was something going on between us, Melody, she would be after my head right now with my own sword."

"I see no problems," Kaoru said, with a smile at Melody. She wondered about Melody's reactions, however -- was Melody also attracted to her husband, or had she simply realized how compromising their position had looked? Likely a bit of both, if her intuition was correct. Kenshin had considerable charisma. Melody might love the son, but any woman who wasn't blind could see how attractive the father was.

"I'm ... I'm going to go to bed now. It's still a couple hours to sunrise."

Melody fled, and after she was out of earshot, Kaoru giggled as she settled down next to Kenshin. "I think you have an admirer."

"She's very much alone in this world." Kenshin looked troubled, now. "I must be careful not to encourage her."

"What, you don't want to take a mistress?" Kaoru teased, poking him in the ribs. "She's cute."

Kenshin turned several shades of pink. With considerable annoyance he said, "You know that I would _never _..."

"Awww ... but you'd make such an adorable couple."

Kenshin gave his wife a glare that expressed just how much irritation he felt the comment deserved, without a single word. Kaoru sobered a bit and said in a far more serious tone, "I am truly glad that I _can _trust you, Kenshin. Melody's crush on you is innocent. Were you not the man you are, however ..."

He closed his eyes. "I know. Another man could take advantage of her."

"Another man with your charm could take advantage of lots of women." Kaoru poked him in the ribs again, expertly finding a ticklish spot.

He squirmed away and then grabbed at her hand and said in a low and husky voice, "I only want to take advantage of one woman."

And for a bit, after he ushered her back up the stairs, she forgot about everything but _Kenshin. _And when they were done, and he was nearly asleep with his arms around her and breath whispering soft against her shoulders, she realized that no matter where she was there would always be one constant in her life: the man she loved more than anything else. Kenshin never changed; Kenshin was always there for her. And as long as she knew he was there, she thought she could handle anything.

* * *

When Kaoru woke up several hours later, Kenshin was still in bed with her. This surprised her a bit, but she could definitely feel his warm, solid bulk beside her. When she opened her eyes she met his amethyst gaze.

He'd thrown the sheets off to his waist and she could see the lean, scarred lines of his upper body as his shirt had come open during the night. She reached out and traced a finger down one of the marks on his chest left by a long-forgotten swordsman's blade. He caught her hand, and pulled it to his mouth, and kissed her fingers. Then, regretfully, he said, "I wish we could linger."

"We could." She rolled over and rose onto her hands and knees, intending to lean over him and kiss him.

"Ie." He shook his head, red bangs swishing across his eyes -- though his gaze lingered on her cleavage, visible down the front of her yukata. Regretfully he said, "Raeko is missing. I need to look for her."

"Missing ...?" Her eyes narrowed. Annoyance warred with concern.

"She left the house about midnight. It's what woke me up last night. I was awaiting her return when Melody came down." He sighed, and stared out the window. The sun was shining outside. Their bedroom overlooked the home's back yard and she could see a breeze stirring the leaves of the yard's trees. "Were this Tokyo, I would not worry, but she does not speak the language and she does not know the laws or the unspoken social rules of this land.

Kenshin slid out from under the covers and padded barefoot to the radiator. They'd left a kettle of water sitting on top of the steam pipes. The water was hot enough to brew tea now, and he did that while she watched. Casually, he poured the hot water over tea in two cups. It was a habit he'd picked up since moving here, tea in the morning from water left to heat up the night before. The house was heated with steam and the radiators were always piping hot except when they were shut off; nights were chilly here, even in summer. And they were getting close to autumn.

Outside, she heard the sputter and cough of a neighbor's Model T -- almost identical to Kenshin's car -- as he fired it up. Probably, he was going to to go to work.

That reminded her. "Don't you have a job to go to?"

"I sent Melody to tell them I'll be late." Kenshin frowned. "They don't need me today anyway."

He stood in the window for a long moment, though, sipping his tea and staring outside. She watched him. He'd lost weight, likely worrying over their son. He was too pale, as well. The morning sun shone across the scarred, knife-sharp planes of his face and his fair skin seemed almost translucent.

Then he looked at her, and flashed a rurouni grin, and said, "I'm off to find our wayward ward. Melody will be back in an hour or so."

"Be careful," she said, because she always did.

He smiled. "Always am."

* * *

Kenshin checked out Chinatown first; Raeko was smart enough to know that she'd blend in best among other Asian faces. The moment she opened her mouth they'd know she wasn't Chinese, and she certainly didn't speak the language, but if she was looking for an adventure that might be where she'd head.

There was no tall, short-haired boy with a secret identity of _'girl' _visible, however, among the crowds. He tried the red light district next, again on the theory that she might be looking for some excitement in the form of dice or a fight. However, his search of the streets, and a quick check of assorted bars, taverns, and gambling establishments turned up nothing.

"Sano," Kenshin addressed thin air, "I could use some help from you now, old friend. Where'd your kid go?"

The red light district he'd just searched wasn't far from the docks and Cannery Row. About thirty seconds after he asked for Sano's help his Model T sputtered and died. He was directly in front of a busy commercial wharf -- Marshall Shipping was a block up the sea front. Here, the strong odor of fish hung in the air and, as he watched, a wagon laden with a heavy load of tuna trundled past, pulled by two skinny mules. A number of small fishing boats were docked and offloading their catch.

Kenshin swore at his vehicle in a choice mixture of insultingly phrased Japanese and profane English. There was nobody to hear but the automobile and, possibly, the ghost of Sanosuke. Sano might have been impressed by Kenshin's command of obscenity, but neither shocked by it nor offended. Kenshin wasn't sure if the problem was ghostly meddling or the usual unpredictable mechanical nature of the automobile, but after a final hissed insult, he added, "... and there's no doubt she's _your _kid."

He heard laughter in the distance, and then a drinking song despite the fact that it wasn't much past noon. He looked up when it registered on him that the drinking song was in Japanese.

Several fishermen were headed down the dock. The were laughing and horsing around -- as he watched, they elbowed one another and the elbowing turning into roughhousing. They weren't drunk -- much --- yet, despite the singing, but he suspected they would shortly end up in the bars.

One of them was taller than the others by an inch or two.

With short hair.

And despite the height, the taller one had boyishly fair features ... or girlishly fair.

Kenshin covered his face with his hands briefly. Then he shouted, "Rae ..." And trailed off. He didn't exactly want to blow her cover as a boy, because he figured it was safer to be a boy than a girl here, and the -ko prefix on her name made it a girl's name.

"Hey, Kenshin-san!" she waved cheerfully. "I found a job!"

He set the parking brake on the Ford, and hopped out. "You scared me to death. I swore to your father I would see that you're safe and I can't do that if you don't tell me where you're going!"

She shrugged. Her tone was unapologetic and not particularly respectful when she responded. "I found work. This is Captain Nick-san. He hired me to work on his fishing boat."

Kenshin glanced at the man, taking his measure. The captain was a sturdy, ruggedly built man, missing a couple fingers, with a broken nose, a scar to rival Kenshin's own slashed across one cheek, and an elbow that didn't quite move right. He looked like he'd lived a hard life. Fishermen generally did.

"It's honest work." Now she sounded defensive.

Kenshin wanted to protest that it was too dangerous. That she didn't need to work. That she could stay home, and he could see that she was given a good education, tutored and coddled and treated as his own daughter.

She met his eyes. Her gaze was fey, full of wildness and freedom. And defiance.

He nodded curtly. "I am relieved it is nothing worse than honest work."

He saw some tension leave her shoulders. She'd probably expected him to make a scene. He wanted to -- had she been one of his own girls, he'd have hauled her home by the ear -- but he doubted it would do any good. If he tried to control her, she would just run away. Fishing was dangerous and difficult work, but she was right in that it was a honest job. The likely didn't know she was female, but she so easily passed for a teenage boy that he didn't think this would be a problem. It was her attitude as well as her looks that made her seem so very boyish.

He looked again at the fisherman, who was studying him curiously. Kenshin started to stick his hand out for a western style handshake, and thought ruefully that he'd been around Westerners too much. He changed that to a bow and said, "My name is Ken Shin. I work for Marshall Shipping, and I promised this one's late father I would see that he is safe."

"I am very pleased to meet you ... You speak Japanese fluently. Kyoto, right?" The fisherman said, easily. There was curiosity in his eyes. "I'd heard that Marshall Shipping had imported a translator when I saw the ambassador last, but nobody had met you yet except him and his daughter."

Which meant that the man already knew Kenshin's cover story of being half white, and Kenshin didn't need to explain his origins. The Japanese community here was so small that likely everyone knew everyone else, and gossip would travel fast. Kenshin smiled slightly and said, "My Japanese is much better than my English, it is true, but that is the job I do."

"Mm. If you have spare time, perhaps you could help us, as well?" The man said, genially. "I'm sure most of us speak less English than you, and none of us read it."

"I could certainly try, though I have a far from perfect command of the langauge." Kenshin was truly pleased by this; he could keep a better eye on Raeko if he had a friendly relationship with her employer.

"Wonderful." The man beamed. "Come, I'll buy you and Rae a drink. He's a hard worker, by the way."

Raeko beamed proudly and held her hands up to display a few blisters on palms that were already callused. "We filled the boat with sardines."

Kenshin nodded at his automobile, parked at the curb in an area that wasn't really meant for parking. "I'm having a little trouble with my automobile. Do you think you could push it to a parking space?"

However, when he returned to his vehicle, it started on the first try. With a shrug, he invited the fishermen and Raeko to pile into the car, ignored their protests that they stank of fish, and drove them up the road to tavern that Nick had alluded to.

* * *

Raeko frowned at the game of _Go. _She was clearly losing to one of her new coworkers, and not happy about it.

Kenshin watched, nursing his first and only drink. The fishermen were a good bit drunker than he was, and Nick observed this as he set down on the stool next to Kenshin. "Not much for beer?"

Kenshin shook his head. "I'm going to go to work after lunch, now that I found Rae. It would set a bad example if I were intoxicated when I showed up."

Which was true, though he was more worried about not being drunk in public period than what anyone would think at the Marshall Shipping office. Losing his head was, as always, a real risk if he drank enough to slow his reflexes down.

"So, what brought you to America?" Nick said, genially. He was intoxicated enough to be nosy, and to want to satisfy his curiosity with direct questions.

Kenshin didn't quite frown, but he felt like it. The question was more than a bit unwelcome -- he wasn't about to tell his life story to a stranger. Few Westerners wondered about the reasons why he left Japan, they just assumed he and his family had gotten itchy feet. Or they'd left for economic reasons. For the Japanese, though, it was a very valid question. It felt almost disloyal to leave Japan and make a living elsewhere, and many Japanese found it weird and strange.

He said finally, "I'm related by adoption and marriage to some wealthy Brits." It was explanation enough, he hoped.

"Mm. My family was killed in a fire. I was at work -- I was a teacher." Nick stared off into space for a long moment. His fingers -- the seven and a half of them he still had -- gripped his stein of beer. His nailbeds turned white as Kenshin watched. In a voice so calm it surprised Kenshin, given the sudden tension radiating from the man's body, he said, "Everything there reminded me of them. This was as far away as I could get."

"I'm very sorry." Kenshin realized now why Nick had taken an American name, too.

He shrugged. "Rae reminds me of my wife, when we were young. We grew up next door neighbors. Yuri was four years younger than me. She'd be twenty, now."

Kenshin blinked. He had assumed that Nick didn't know that Raeko was a girl. Nick caught his reaction and smiled faintly. He said, "Rae told me she was a girl, after we got back this morning."

"You don't mind?"

Nick shrugged. "She's a hard worker." He scratched his forehead, where sunburnt skin was peeling. "Besides. She does remind me of Yuri. Yuri was tall and thin too, and liked to argue."

Kenshin glanced up from Nick's hands to Nick's face. He studied the man, trying to read his nature from the man's weatherbeaten, scarred features and close-set eyes. He wasn't even sure how old Nick was. Old enough to have married and lost a family, and probably prematurely aged by the elements. He couldn't tell a thing about him, other than that he was a hard worker -- as evidenced by the battering the man's body had taken, as a fisherman -- and probably not evil. Finally, Kenshin said, "She's the daughter of a friend. I'm sworn to protect her."

Nick grinned. It was a knowing, mischevious expression, and made the scar across his face bunch up. He said, "And she's not making your life easy, is she?"

"No." Kenshin growled, "She's not."

But, Kenshin decided, he was a little less worried now. Raeko had found friends, it seemed, and a job. 'Fisherman' wasn't a career choice he would have picked for her -- it was hard, dangerous, a man's job -- but he would not tell her no, either. If he did, he knew she would simply rebel further. And there were worse things she could be doing.


End file.
